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COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 






The Breakdown of the 
Gothenburg System 



THE 

BREAKDOWN OF THE 

GOTHENBURG 

SYSTEM 



By ERNEST GORDON 



"The Gothenburg procedure of buying up the drinkshops, suppressing some and 
operating others, has naturally from our point of view no justification. It sxtits only 
the schemes of those who believe in 'moderation and who will neither work for nor 
understand a thoroughgoing reform. It goes without saying that for all clear heads 
universal prohibition is the end aimed at." — Dr. Matthaei, Physician on the Gen- 
eral Staff of the German Army. 

"VVV have a good army for revievos but a bad one for war." — Persian Official 
to Lord Curzon. 

"What medicine cannot touch, iron will heal, and what iron loill not heal, fire 
twill cure." — Schiller. 



Published By 

The American Issue Publishing Company 

Westerville, Ohio 






Copyright 1911 
By The Americao'^Issue Publishing Company 






NOTE— The words Samlag and Boidg are the Norwegian and Swedish syn- 
onyms respectwety for the word Company. They are loosely used for drink-selling 
places. 



;CI,A29:>357 



The Breakdown of the 
Gothenburg System 



CHAPTER I. 
Introduction. 

There have been hitherto two classes of reporters 
on the Gothenburg System, — first, the theoretical who 
explain how admirably it must work because of the 
ingenuity of its mechanism ; — secondly, the statistical 
who seek to prove by figures of declining consumption 
that it does work, all the while neglecting the historical 
and prohibitory factors to which these results are 
chiefly due. 

What is now needed is a third kind of reporter 
who will show how little satisfactorily the System 
actually does work. He has but to live in any Scan- 
dinavian community, small or large, where the Com- 
pany shop is planted and to snap from time to time his 
mental kodak. He will soon get material enough to 
disprove the fairest Gothenburg theory. 

This little booklet is an assortment of such pic- 
tures which have been sent at intervals to American 
papers. It has nothing in it of Wordsworth's 



10 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

*'keen research, 
Unbiased, unbewildered, and unmoved/' 

The book which will prove scientifically the fail- 
ure of the Gothenburg System to solve the drink 
problem is yet to be written. This is published as a 
possible stop-gap until such a work appears. It is 
hoped that it may give pause to any well-meaning ef- 
forts to transplant this institution to America as a 
substitute for prohibition. 

The great advantage of prohibitory legislation is 
that it sooner or later weans the population as a whole 
from the drink habit. Anyone who has lived a few 
years in Northern New England would be convinced 
of this if he but recalled the conditions prevailing 
there fifty years ago when drink was used on harvest 
fields, at barn raisins^s, at ''musters," at weddinos, at 
funerals, at church-dedications and at every other 
function of social life. The enemies of prohibition in- 
sist that alcoholism is but driven under. The Com- 
mittee of Fifty, for example, claims that this concealed 
alcoholism is indicated by an excessive consumption 
of patent medicines in prohibition areas. Such an 
abnormal consumption is, however, but a figment of 
these investigators' mythopoeic fancy. There is abso- 
lutely no statistical or other reliable proof of its ex- 
istence. Turning to Scandinavia on the other hand 
one finds the Company drink-shop continually educat- 
ing new relays into the drink habit. And the substi- 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM ii 

tntes which do not play an important role in Maine 
appear here alongside of the ordinary drinks. The 
sequence is first beer, then spirits, then every imagin- 
able villanons compound. Thus one reads in a 
Swedish new^spaper of a little town in Darlecarlia, that 
charming, picturesque, and characteristically Swedish 
province, where the angry people get together in mass- 
meeting to protest against the sale by the local drug- 
gist of lyptol, salubrin, and eau de cologne as bev- 
erages. Indeed the abnormal appetite developed by 
the Gothenburg drink-shop has carried drinkers so far 
that Swedish chemists are considering the desirability 
of putting emetics in denatured spirits/^^ The 1909 



(i) SociaHsts in Molnlycke (28 Feb. '09) consider the 
following question: "What can be done to prevent the use 
of denatured spirits as a drink?" 

It was reported "that denatured spirits were widely used 
for this purpose among working men and that the conse- 
quences were ruinous to body and brain in an extreme de- 
gree." 

Mr. Karlsson of Gothenburg offered (1910) to the 
Swedish parliament a bill to regulate the sale of denatured 
spirits. He wants the amount sold to a given person limited, 
the hours of sale reduced and the number of selling places 
cut down. He said in his speech introducing the measure: 
"We have sad experiences in Gothenburg and the neighbor- 
ing parishes where furniture is made in hundreds of homes, 
of the way in which denatured spirits are used for intoxicating 
drink. This abuse has so developed that the guardians of the 
poor in Gothenburg are urging thorough reform in the 
matter of selling industrial alcohol." That there is need of 
government action appears from the last report of the chief 



12 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

report of the Christiania Samlag says (p. 17): "In 
spite of a sharp control on the part of the police — 
uniformed and secret — it has not been possible to over- 
come the illegal sale of brandy and of furniture polish 
for drinking purposes. This illegal brandy sale seems 
almost to increase on the streets and in doorways, 
although many have been brought before the courts 
and very heavy fines have been imposed as a rule. 
Denatured spirits also are still used for intoxication in 
various parts of the city.'' And within ten days of the 
writing an order has been issued by the Norwegian 
government to all sellers of furniture polish in Christi- 
ania to desist from selling that article at hours w^hen 
the Company shops are closed. Would such an order 
be required in Portland, Maine, or Fargo, N. Dakota? 
The Gothenburg System while constantly renew- 
ing the constituency of alcoholists furnishes no effect- 
ive guarantee against illegal selling. Indeed the ful- 
filling of its first malign function clears the way for the 
last named phenomenon. Students of the alcohol 
problem are beginning to realize that, paradoxical as 
it may seem at first thought, illicit sale flourishes 
where the sale of drink is legalized even more than in 
prohibitory places. In Philadelphia, for example, 
the number of speak-easies according to the Committee 



provincial physician of Gavleborg province. He declares 
that cologne, salubrin, etc., are bought and drunk to a very 
v^ide extent and that the vice is spreading, especially in 
Halsingland. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 13 

of Fifty '^exceeds by not a little that of licensed 
dealers" — in other words, is probably greater than the 
entire number of all such illicit sellers in the older pro- 
hibition states, Maine, Kansas and North Dakota. If 
the illicit sellers in all the ''wet'' sections of the United 
States were counted up they would presumably out- 
number relatively those of the "dry" regions. This, 
too. must be remembered, that as time passes the 
number of alcohol users in prohibitory regions tends 
to decrease by death and with them the illicit sale 
which ministered to them. The eminent statistician, 
Prof. Harald Westergaard of the University of 
Copenhagen, gives an illustration from Denmark of the 
same sociological Iaw\ He declares from a study of 
1,495 i*eplies to his question as to the extent of 
illegal selling that Sjaelland, the province with by 
far the largest number of legal drink shops, has 
illicit drinking-places in 33 per cent of its parishes; 
Fyn and the other islands in 19 per cent; and Jylland, 
where temperance sentiment is strongest and drink- 
shops relatively fewest, in but 11 per cent of the 
parishes. ^^^ 

Legal sale does not therefore as a rule diminish 
illegal sale. This is so under the Company System as 
under the license systems of America and Denmark. 
*'Morgenbladet" of Christiania remarked the other day 
that in the central quarter of that city it seemed as if 
the stair-cases and hallways had become quite general- 

^2) "Denmarks Kultur ved Aar 1900" p. 143-144. 



14 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

ly the business places of boot-leggers. But there is no 
lack of drinking facilities in the Norwegian capital. 
'Tt has been proved/' says Dr. Scharffenberg, an 
authority on the Gothenburg System, "that there were 
more illegal sales in Frederikstad after the re-establish- 
ment of the Samlag in 1904 than in 1903 when it was 
closed.'* Indeed the Gothenburg System itself has 
been known to have had a finger in unlawful business 
and on no small scale. Thus some time ago it was 
discovered that the Artisans Union of Trondhjem, 
which was selling drink without legal permission, ob- 
tained its supplies to the extent of 18,000 kroner yearly 
from the Gothenburg drink-shop. The management 
confessed that it was well aware that it was breaking 
the law. 

The fact so often dwelt on that the income of the 
Company stockholders is severely limited does not 
work out as one theoretically would suppose it would. 
Business men like to see the enterprise they manage 
prosper even though they do not profit greatly by it. 
It is possible, however, that they do profit in certain 
questionable ways. Dr. Scharfifenberg hints at com- 
missions from the distillers who supply the companies, 
New Years gifts, and various forms of tantieme.^ ^^ 
The writer picked up recently from the seat of a rail- 
way carriage in Sweden a local paper which displayed 
on its front page the annual report of the Gothenburg 

(i) Afholds Politiske Sporgsmaal No. 2, p. 70. By Dr. 
Johan Scharffenberg. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 15 

shop at Kungsbacka. Four things were noticeable : 

First : The men who directed the affair and whose 
names were given at the top all belonged to "the 
classes/' They were bankers, landed proprietors, 
merchants and consuls. In other words this is a pet 
institution of the rich. 

Second: Of the expenses just one quarter was 
salary paid to the directors. This is no doubt a potent 
reason why such believe in the success of their institu- 
tion. 

Third : Of the sales only between one-fifth and 
one-sixth were in drinks. Nearly five-sixths of the 
value sold was bottled. When a man buys a bottle of 
brandy there is no automatic brake which will come 
into action to keep him sober. So far as five-sixths of 
the trade of this institution is concerned, therefore, all 
the safe-guards which are claimed for it are inoperative. 

Fourth : The second column of the report was 
almost entirely taken up with attempts to explain a 
considerable shortage in the stock on hand. This sug- 
gests scandal such as seems invariably to attach to the 
alcohol traffic. 

That in practise the Gothenburg System has 
miserably failed to produce ideal results is patent on 
every hand. One last example. The tobacconist shops 
display in their windows this week a full page cartoon 
of ''Vikingen,'' the Norwegian comic paper, in which 
the new recruits leaving for Gardemoen, the army's 
central camp and drill grounds, are represented as be- 



i6 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

ing carried by their officers into the train. It is no 
exaggeration ! Certain of the railroad personnel said 
to a representative of ''Orebladet/' ''Never before have 
we 'shipped' so many drunken soldiers. The higher 
officers as well as sub-officers had literally to haul and 
push the helpless young' fellows into the trains.'* 

Such are the fruits of the Samlag's regulations and 
restrictions. A system which in Sweden has run up 
arrests for drunkenness 400 per cent since its establish- 
ment (from 10,831 in 1865 to 42,500 in 1905) ^'> and 
which in Norway has given us 9,384^^^ arrests in one 
year in a city of 230,000 people (Christiania) has nothing 
to teach Americans who are reaching out for better 
things in their ow^n land. The most inadequately en- 
forced prohibition law is more satisfactory. 

Fifteen years ago there was a certain Mr. Gustav 
Thomann, who was wont to emerge at state-house 
hearings when the brewing interests were in any way 
threatened by temperance legislation. At one of the 
earlier Anti-alcohol Congresses, the one held in Zurich 



(O Petersson. "Svenska rusdryckslagstiftningen och 
Goteborgs-systemet," p. 59. Of course the population of 
Sweden has not increased in anything like this proportion. 

(-) The report of the Central Statistical Bureau, ''Braen- 
devinssamlagene og forbruket av braendevin, vin og 51," 1907, 
p. 2-/) gives under the caption of ''Straffaeldte for drukken- 
skap, etc." (i. e., drunk and disorderly) for the five years 
1900-1904 inclusive, an average of 18,042 arrests each year in 
Christiania. Eleven hundred and twenty of these yearly 
arrests were of women. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 17 

in 1887, this attorney of the brewers represented the 
United States! The best thing that could be done at 
the banquet which closed the congress was to arrange 
that it should be ''half alcohol-free," i. e., that those 
who did not wish to drink could refrain from so doing! 

Events have marched rapidly since then. Modern 
investigation has about finished its great work on the 
corpus vile of alcohol. As a consequence ''moderation'' 
has been abandoned for abstinence. To abstinence pro- 
hibition is the inevitable correlary. The Eleventh In- 
ternational Anti-alcohol Congress (1907), convened in 
the high places of the Gothenburg System, contempt- 
uously repudiated that whole arrangement. The Con- 
gress of 1909, which met in London, saw the formation 
of an international prohibition group. 

And when in the United States the popular moral 
conscience already accomplishing so much shall have 
the reinforcement which modern scientific leaders 
stand ready to give it, great things will indeed happen. 

For at last the time of compromises, high-license, 
dispensaries, Scandinavian exotics, — is over. From 
now on it is to be a straight fight for the destruction oi 
the whole traffic. Sooner or later all must line up for 
or against. 

"Die ihr den grossen Kampf der Zeit 

Ausfechten wollt, herbei ihr Ritter! 
Sprecht welcher sach' ihr euch geweiht, 
Sprecht frei durchs offne Helmgegitter ! 
Entweder, oder!" 



CHAPTER II. 

Ex-President White of Cornell on the Gothenburg 

System. 

In his entertaining reminiscences the honored ex- 
president of Cornell University devotes some pages 
to a discussion of the drink problem on which as he 
remarks, he ^'has reflected seriously." Visiting Swed- 
en some years ago he took pains to obtain information 
regarding the Gothenburg System and "became satis- 
fied that it was the best solution of the problem ever 
obtained.'' 

Dr. White's observations fall into two classes, — 
those of a general nature and those which have to do 
particularly with the success of the Company System in 
Norway and Sweden. He opens with the familiar 
statement of the extremely temperate habits of the 
wine-drinking Latin peoples. The Italians, whom he 
cites first are not, however, so sparing in their use of 
alcohol as tourists would have us believe. Their con- 
sumption per capita is more than twice as great as 
that of the American people. ^^^ As to the French 

(^i) Vide Sundbarg, "xA.pergus statistiques internation- 
aux" — lie annee. The order is France 18.9 liters (absolute 
alcohol), Belgium 13.2, Italy and Switzerland 12 each and 
the United States 5.5. 

Dr. White has in time past set in contrast the theologian 
and science. One might suggest in view of these travelers' 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 19 

their progress along "the primrose path" has been all 
too rapid as Dr. White himself confesses. France is in- 
deed the largest consumer of alcohol in the world. 
Nor can this be due to any rise in the price of light 
wines as is suggested by Dr. White. Actually the 
prices of wines have fallen so low as to lead to revo- 
lutionary movements on the part of the wine growers 



accounts of European sobriety a similar opposition of the 
tourist and science. Dr. White has visited Italy twelve times 
and gives it a clean bill of health as far as drunkenness is 
concerned. An objective study of the subject issued by the 
"Federazione Antialcoolista Italiana" ("L'Alcoolismo e un 
Pericolo per Tltalia" Milano, 1909) tells a different story. 
Dr. Arcelli, for example, reports on infantile alcoholism. An 
enquete carried on in the schools of IMilan among 38,462 
children (p. 21) brings to light the fact that 24.8 per cent of 
the boys and 11 per cent of the girls confess to have been 
intoxicated at various times. On pp. 127-138 are given tables 
of the number of drink-selling places in Italian cities. Milan 
had in 1907, 5,225, — one to every 46 resident males. The 634 
streets and squares of the city average 8 drinking places 
each. Turin has 2,482 saloons, one to every 55 male adults. 
For every bakery in Turin there are six places where drink 
is sold. The growth of alcoholic psychoses is exposed in a 
report of the Florentine alienist Dr. Amaldi, (Rivista speri- 
mentale di freniatria, vol. 34, 1903.) In the 45 asylums of 
the kingdom, of 38,764 patients 3,398 are suffering from alco- 
holic insanities. But in some asylums the percentage is far 
higher. That of Ancona reaches 40 per cent. Wine 
alcoholism is responsible for an important proportion of these 
distressing statistics. Pp. 23-105 are taken up with an ex- 
haustive enquiry among the royal procurators of every 
province of Italy as to the relation of alcohol to crime. ''The 



20 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

of South France, movements which only recently 
seemed about to precipitate a political overturn. How 
little wine effects as a prophylactic against the use of 
higher saturations of alcohol is indicated by the 
following confession from ''L'Etoile Bleue/' (Dec, 
1909,) the organ of the ''Ligue Nationale contre 
L'Alcoolisme/' an organization neutral as far as wine 



opinion as to the great danger in which Italy stands from 
alcoholism is practically unanimous." **In this circuit alco- 
holism is a very great plague," writes the procurator of 
Undine. The number of saloons is enormous. Sixty-five per 
cent of the crimes of violence are due to drink." The 
procurator of Treviso attributes more than half of the local 
crime including crimes of carnal violence, to drink. In Padua 
''the number of drunkards is not small. Crime and frequent 
suicides are largely to be set down to drink." From Venice: 
"The vice of drunkenness is widespread and deeply rooted 
and the number of drink-shops continually increases." 
Brescia: "Eighty per cent of the crimes of violence result 
from the use of alcohol." The Milan prosecutor says: "It 
falls to my lot frequently to have to sum up the causes of a 
tragedy in two words — wine and knife. Alcoholism is one 
of the great evils afflicting North Italy. An enormous number 
of poison-distributing shops infest our city." Como: "More 
than half of our crimes against persons are committed in a 
state of intoxication and three-fourths of the thieving is the 
result of the waste of wages in drink-shops." Parma: "The 
increase in wages and the cheapness of wine have led to a 
growth of drunkenness." Ancona: "The advance of alco- 
holism is caused by the vast movement to and from America. 
(This is a complaint which occurs frequently in these reports 
and elsewhere). There are 9,579 drink-shops in this circuit." 
In Lucca and Florence "the very greatest proportion of 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 21 

is concerned though batthng vigorously against other 
forms of alcoholica. "It is particularly sad/' so it 
runs, "to have to affirm that the departments till lately 
considered least in danger from alcohol because of 
their great winecrops — Card, Herault, Bouches-du- 



quarrels and bloodlettings rcsnh from drink." From Leg- 
horn come reports of a popular drink, "ponci," in which 
sulphuric ether and tannic acid are important elements. "The 
stranger who visits this city cannot but be depressed," says 
this procurator, "at the sight of the innumerable bars 
thronged continually by people of both sexes and all ages 
flagrantly given over to this vice. Drinking and quarreling 
have become the inveterate and daily habits of entire classes 
in our society. This terrible scourge threatens to sterilize 
the best seed of our race." Iserina: "Alcohol has become 
one of the most insidious factors of social pathology." The 
procurator of S. Angelo dei Lombardi quotes Dr. Legrain's 
definition of a saloon as "a laboratory of moral poison" and 
remarks that in many cases which have come before his 
court the criminal confesses to have deliberately charged 
himself with w^ne or other alcohol solutions as a preparation 
for committing crime. 

To return to Sweden. Dr. Jacques Bertillon says 
("L'Alcoolisme et les Moyens de le combattre," p. 213): 'T 
ought to remark that I have hardly seen a man intoxicated in 
the two visits I have made to Gothenburg. Messrs. Rown- 
tree and Sherwell met but one." Then this naive Sir John 
Mandeville proceeds to print the table of arrests for Gothen- 
burg from 1879, when 39 drunkards were taken up to the 
thousand of the population, to 1898, when the number had 
risen to 57 to the thousand, or some 7,000 yearly! And thus 
he gives us a fairly good guage of the value of these passing 
tourist observations. 



22 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Rhone, Var, Vaucluse, Pyrenees — Orientales, Saone 
et Loire, are most ravaged with absinthe." 

Dr. White declares next that ''the European if he 
ever takes distilled liquor sips a very small glass of it 
after dinner to aid digestion.'' To any inclined to ac- 
cept this extremely favorable picture of European cus- 
toms the writer would recommend a day or two spent 
among the miners of the Borinage (South Hainault) 
or in the similar regions of Upper Silesia. Failing 
th;s it would be sufficient to read such frightful stud- 
ies as Dr. Wlassak's on spirit drinking among the 
work people of Moravia or Massard's ''De TAlcohol- 
isme dans le Quartier St. Antoine.'' The last writer, 
for example, says that from the Hopital St. Antoine 
to the Place de la Bastille there are 87 drink-shops to 
150 houses and that their average output is fifteen 
absinthes to each of every other kind of drink includ- 
ing wine/^^ 

Again, Dr. White ventures the following: ''The 
best temperance workers, among us that I know are 
the men who brew light, pure beer.'' He means, we 
take it, such representative brewers as Pabst and 
Schlitz of Milwaukee and Seipp of Chicago who either 
by mortgage or by ownership are said to control 75 
per cent of the saloons of Chicago which they use as 

(2) As a matter of fact the per capita consumption of 
50 per cent spirits is given by the statistician Sundbarg for 
1908, — for the United States, 5.36 liters; for Europe as a 
whole, 6.94 liters. 



THE GOTHKNBURCi SYSTEM 23 

outlets for their niaiuifactured product. We wonder 
if there is another person within the bounds of the 
United States who believes these men and their subor- 
dinates to be effective ''temperance workers.'^ We 
should like to ask further if Dr. White has ever looked 
into a certain classic on the beer danger by Dr. 
Hoppe?^^^ Or does he know the position of Professors 
Gruber, Kraepelin, and Buchner of the University of 
the beer metropolis of Munich on this subect?^^) We 
can assure him that he stands in his opinion at the 
very antipodes from them. 

Fourthly, he remarks that beer and wine used to 
excess aid in freeing the next generation from men 
of vicious propensities and weak will. Modern Science 
however proves precisely the reverse. ^5) Indeed it has 
put into the hands of the prohibitionist no stronger 
weapon than the investigations which show the blasto- 
phthoric workings of alcohol. Tw^o illustrations will 



(3) "Die Biergefahr'* (20th thousand). See also his 
"Das Bier als Volksgetrank." 

(4) Prof. Kraepelin is authority for the statement that 
in 1905 of all the insane in the Munich psychiatrical clinic, 
one-third were beer alcoholists. 

(5) Dr. Fock remarks that from the point of view of 
race hygiene it is not the completely degenerate progeny of 
drinkers who are the worst for society, since they are doomed 
to extinction but those on the middle grades not wholly de- 
generate but of less value who lower the general average. 

The number of degenerates disappearing is small in view 
of the constantly increasing number of alcoholists. 

Publications of the Alkohol-Gegner Bund. No. 39. 



24 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

suffice to indicate that far from cleansing the race 
from weak wills and intelligences alcohol increases 
their number in succeeding generations enormously — 
that it is in fact as Prof. Forel says the chief producer 
of "Untermenschen." 

a. Dr. Bezzola has investigated the life history 
of over 9,000 idiots in Swiss asylums. One of the strik- 
ing facts brought to light is the following. Having 
secured the date of each person's birth, he reckoned 
back nine months to the date of begetting and found 
that in the majority of cases this fell at a season when 
much alcohol was used, as carnival, Christmas, or vin- 
tage times. 

b. Dr. MacNichol at the instance of the New 
York Academy of Medicine examined 55,000 school 
children with special reference to the inherited results 
of alcoholism. We have no space for the details of his 
weight}^ studies but will quote mereh^ one summarized 
table of statistics : 

1. Of those free from hereditary alcoholism 

96 per cent were proficient. 
4 per cent were dullards. 

2. Of those suffering from heredity alcoholic taint 

23 per cent were proficient. 

yy per cent were dullards. 
We pass now to Dr. White's observations on the 
Gothenburg System, He says first that it has greatly 
diminished intemperance. This is often asserted by 
observers who have not really studied the subject. But 
the two prohibitory features embedded in the legisla- 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 25 

tion of 1852 to which friends of the system almost 
never call attention are quite sufificient to explain any 
decrease of drinking in Sweden. First private distill- 
ing was prohibited. This broke tip or carried off the 
family still from thousands of farms. Again there 
was actual prohibition of the sale of spirits in nearly 
the whole of rural Sweden. In Norway similar legisla- 
tion effected similar results. Thanks to the law of 
1845 consumption of spirits sank from 16 liter per cap. 
in 1833 to 4.4 liters in 1865. Not till 1871 came the 
Samlag. Since then the decrease has been slight. 

Furthermore the magnificent temperance agita- 
tion which has among other things made every ninth 
person in Norway a member of one or another temper- 
ance society has certainly contributed largely to the 
result. If the same ratio prevailed in the United 
States, we should have nine millions of members of 
temperance organizations instead of the not more than 
two million at present. 

Such facts as these are not cited by Dr. White in 
explanation of the advance along the road to absti- 
nence which Scandinavia has undoubtedly made. Like 
so many others he lays stress on features of the Sys- 
tem w^hich to the waiter seem comparatively unimpor- 
tant. He says for example, that ''no drink is sold with- 
out something to eat with it.'' This is not true. One 
may buy a liter of spirits from a Company store as 
freely as in a Bowery dive. Nominally one is required 
when buying a single drink to purchase eatables w^ith 
it. Actually as the writer has observed a dirty half 



26 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

cracker with a thin bit of cheese on it is made to do 
service a dozen times, being shoved back and forth 
from bar-maid to successive drinkers and never eaten. 

Secondly, he characterises the drinking places as 
"clean, tidy and decent." We have seen such in Norway. 
But in general and especially in the poorer quarters 
of the large cities they are greasy, ill-smelling, crowd- 
ed. One in particular which formerly stood at the 
corner of Ostermalms Torg in Stockholm comes to 
mind as a disgraceful example. It must be added how- 
ever that the financial prosperity of the Company — 
which with the Carnegie Brewery is the largest tax- 
payer in Gothenburg, has enabled it since Dr. White 
made his observations to put up far more sumptuous 
drinking places. But the alcoholists one sees in and 
about these, premises are no less miserable and un- 
kempt than formerly. 

Thirdly, ''only pure liquors are sold*^^^ instead of 
those that are absolutely poisonous and maddening." 
But alcohol itself is absolutely poisonous and madden- 
ing. Sir Victor Horsley classifies in a most natural 
way alcohol with diptheria as a heart poison. Prof. 
Sims Woodhead, the eminent Cambridge University 
pathologist, declares it to be the most dangerous poi- 

(i) ''The Union of Importers and Exporters in Chris- 
tiaiiia has called to the attention of the department of com- 
merce the fact that a number of Samlags are importing 
brandy of an inferior quality. The department has sum- 
moned the Samlags to explain." Christiania papers, Jan., 
1908. 



THl^: (iOTHENBURG SYS'rp:M 



-/ 



son in the whole pharmacopoeia. The matter of adul- 
teration therefore is of minor importance. 'Tt is a 
widespread sophism," said the eminent French physi- 
cian and anti-alcoholist, Dr. Jacquet, speaking before 
the Societe de Medicine Publique (Feb. 27, 1907) 
'*that an unadulterated drink is a wholesome drink. 
The purest vitriol remains vitriol. One is astonished, 
in truth, to be obliged to make so obvious a remark." 

Fourthly, *'it forbids under penalties selling to men 
who have drunk too much." This statement recalls 
the remark of Faust, 'Tf there be no devil whence 
so many devils?" If selling to those nearly drunk is 
not customary where do all the staggerers come from 
and why are the statistics of arrest so high? He con- 
tinues : ''The mainpointisthat the men appointed to sell 
the drink have no motive to sell more liquor than is 
consistent w^ith the sobriety of their customers." To 
this we would object that those who sell the drink are 
not men at all but women which is no unimportant 
feature. Certainly not many girls would care to refuse 
a big rawboned navvy or sailor in an advanced stage of 
intoxication who demanded more drink. 

But neither are the companies themselves as scrup- 
ulous as is generally alleged. For instance some years 
since the Bolag people in Stockholm determined to 
open a new drinking shop in a quarter where none had 
existed. The section is one of wharves where much of 
the coal, oil, lumber, etc., of the city is handled. When 
the longshoremen heard of the project they circulated 
a petition against it which was freely signed and pre- 



2S THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

sented to the managers of our benevolent institution. 
The petition had not the slightest effect and only pres- 
sure brought on the city authorities prevented ttie 
forcing of this drink-shop on the people/^^ 

Another instance was reported recently in the 
Christiania papers. The army people and the city 
government asked the Company directors of Freder- 
ickstad to close a certain shop near the army barracks 
which was the cause of much disorder. They stead- 
fastly refused to withdraw. I may add that this and 
all other spirit-shops in the city have since been closed 
by the disgusted voters. 

Furthermore Dr. White has presumably over- 
looked the fact that the rubric to which he refers has 
to do only with the sale of spirits. The companies and 
tlieir agents are free to push the sale of beer to what- 
ever extent the}^ please and their profits on it are sub- 
ject to no restriction. 

Fifthly, he says and repeats the assertion : 'T regret 
to see that the fanatics have recently wrecked the Sys- 
tem." In the second volume: ''Unfortunately since 
that time fanatics have obtained control and have pass- 
ed an entirely prohibitory law w^ith the result, as I 
understand, that the community is now discovering 



(i) The Hvita Band Forening, branch of the W. C. T. 
U. in Sweden, has at a cost of 100,000 kroner erected an al- 
cohol-free restaurant and recreation place in this quarter, 
Wartan. The longshoremen have not and will not petition 
against its opening. They know their friends as well as their 
enemies. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 29 

that prohibition does not prohibit and that the worst 
kinds of liquor are again sold." Here Dr. White has 
passed into the realm of the imaginative. No such 
change has taken place in Gothenburg or indeed in 
Sweden. Conditions remain unfortunately the same 
as for forty years past. In Norway there is a limited 
local option law not ''an entirely prohibitory law." 
There is no ground however for applying to its work- 
ings the stereotyped anti-prohibition phrases. 

An increasing number in both Sweden and Norway 
would see gladly the transition to a prohibitory re- 
gime. Let us recall some of these fanatics. There is 
Dr. Wallis of the Karolinska Institut, doyen of the 
medical profession in Sw^eden, and his colleague Prof. 
Santesson, and the well-known Baron Hermelin and 
that charming gentleman, Mr. Ernst Beckman, radical 
leader in the Swedish Riksdag and the Hon, Sven 
Aarestad, Minister of Agriculture for Norway, w^ho 
has recently delivered a remarkable speech in favor 
of national prohibition. Again there is Dr. Ragnar 
Vogt, docent in psychiatry in the University of Chris- 
tiania, whose university record w^as almost without a 
parallel and the Norwegian alienist. Dr. Scharfifenberg, 
and Dr. Helenius, author of ''Alkohol Sporgsmalet" 
and favorite pupil of the statistician, Prof. Westergaard 
also a radical temperance man and Professor Laitinen 
of Helsingfors w^hose investigations in the Halle Lab- 
oratorium on alcohol and infectious diseases are epoch- 
making. Then there is the political economist Prof. 
Gustav Cassels and that gallant soldier. General Axel 



30 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Rappe, and the criminal-law professor, Dr. Thyren of 
the University of Lund whose speech for national pro- 
hibition in the last Swedish Riksdag was ordered 
posted in every commune from Trelleborg to Hapa- 
randa, and the physiologist Prof. Frey Svensson of 
Upsala and Prof. Henschen and Prof. Medin and many 
more. The Crown Prince of Sweden in a recent 
speech has practically accepted the prohibitionist 
position. 

In a delightful passage Dr. White says of some of 
the occupants of the Cornell University pulpit: "Be- 
coming acquainted with them I have learned to love 
many men whom I previously distrusted and have 
come to see more and more the force of the saying, 
'The man I don't like is the man I don't know.' " An- 
other experience of the same sort awaits him when 
armed with ample introductions he calls on the pro- 
hibitionist leaders of Scandinavia. 

There is one more statement to which we must 
take exception. ''Of course/' says Dr. White, 'T shall 
have the honor of being railed at by every fanatic who 
reads these lines." Have these anticipations been ful- 
filled? We regret to notice the undignified epithets 
"fanatics" and "temperance screamers" in the context. 
We are sure that no prohibitionist would throw simil- 
arly ofifensive names at one who has grown gray in the 
nation's service. 

The present writer holds extreme views — views 
akin to those of the great investigator Metchnikoflf, 
wlio said that if he could have his way every drop of 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 31 

wine, beer, and spirits in France would go into the 
sewer. Towards President White, however, he cher- 
ishes that feeling of deep gratitude which all Amer- 
icans share because of his services in behalf of clean 
politics, international peace, and the higher education. 
Dr. White in his great work at Cornell has been a lead- 
er in many directions. One more piece of pioneering 
we would gladly see him undertake: viz., the establish- 
ment of a lectureship in alcohology. The famous sur- 
geon Konig of Berlin in his ''Lehrbuch der Allgemein- 
en Chirurie." speaks of alcoholism as the most widely 
spread of all diseases. Yet extraordinary as it may 
seem, there is not an university chair in the w^orld de- 
voted to its study. In Europe steps are being taken to 
remedy this lack, Dr. Robert Koppe of Moscow being 
especially earnest in the agitation. In the last eight 
years a profound anti-alcohol movement has taken 
place in European scientific circles. Thanks to the 
fifteen cent magazine which is doing work our fifteen 
million dollared universities ought long since to have 
done, the American public is beginning to hear some- 
thing of it. 

At this juncture there is a clear opportunity for 
Cornell to redeem the reputation of American schools 
and to make history for itself. Dr. White describes the 
visiting professors — Froude, Freeman and others — 
whose lectures constituted a novel feature in the early 
life of his university. There are other professors quite as 
prominent who might be induced to give the American 
people a straight lead on the alcohol question from a 



32 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Cornell class-room, the following, to name but a few : 

The great anatomist, Prof. Weichselbaum of Vi- 
enna, President of the Austrian Anti-Alcohol Society. 

Prof. Max von Gruber, successor to the renowned 
Prof. Pettenkofifer in the chair of hygiene, in the Uni- 
versity of Munich. 

His associate in the same university, the psychiat- 
rist, Prof. Kraepelin. 

Prof. Rubner, who holds the chair of hygiene in 
the University of Berlin. 

Prof. Masaryk of the University of Prague. 

M. le Dr. Legrain, editor of ''Les Annales Anti-al- 
cooliques'' and perhaps the leading physician in France. 

The hardly less eminent Dr. Laborde. 

The physiological chemist, Prof. Dr. von Bunge, 
of Basel. 

The statistician Prof. Westergaard of the Univer- 
sity of Copenhagen. 

Prof. Sims Woodhead of Cambridge University. 

Prof. Dr. Forel, late of the University of Zurich. 

Dr. med. Wlassak of Vienna and Rome. 

Prof. Dr. Aschaffenburg. 

Prof. Kassowitz in the University of Vienna. 

Dr. Roubinovitch of the Salpetriere. 

Dr. Mendelson of the 'Tnstitut Anti-alcoolique," 
St. Petersburg. 

Prof. Vandervelde of the Belgian Social Democ- 
racy. 

Prof. Hercod of the International Anti-alcohol 
Bureau, Lausanne. 



CHAPTER III. 

The Gothenburg System Invades a Gothenburg Park. 

" 'Tis enough to make half 
Yonder zodiac laugh 
When rulers begin to allude 
To their lack of ambition 
And strong opposition 
To all but the general good." 

Thomas Hardy, 'The Dynasts." 

Three thousand people in the big circus ampi- 
theatre of Gothenburg! Three thousand angry citi- 
zens mostly men of the intelligent middle and wage- 
working classes crowding the largest hall of the city 
and hundreds more unable to get admission! What is 
it all about? 

They wanted to take the people's park from them 
and hand it over to the Gothenburg System. The 
good city fathers lamented that the tender feet of 
little children should be cut on the glass bottle bits 
which ''irresponsible drinkers" now and then brought 
into the park from the city and determined to arrange 
for ''orderly drinking.'' They regretted the unhealthy 
conditions which prevailed in their ill-ventilated city 
drink-shops and sought to facilitate drinking in God's 
own out-of-doors. They declared that if a drink-shop 
were not attached to the people's pleasure ground, 
tourists, — American, English and above all German, 



34 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

would pass by Gothenburg on their northern ex- 
cursions. Of course they had no thought of the money 
the enterprise would produce. They never have ! Their 
whole interests was in the people's welfare. 

But the people were thinking, too. A week before 
this meeting the socialists had foregathered, packing 
the Winter Pavilion. Their grievance was of a double 
nature. They were there to protest against the 
action of their own leaders in supporting the pro- 
posal of the city government and so betraying the 
party on whose programme work for temperance has 
a distinct place. More than one speaker suggested 
suspension as a just penalty for this unfaithfulness. 
From five o'clock until nine the discussion lasted. 
Some twenty speakers were heard. Again and again 
the fact was emphasized that industrial emancipation 
and emancipation from drink were causes indissolubly 
linked. 'Tt is pure nonsense/' said Thorsson, ''to work 
for the uplifting of the common people if at the same 
time we neglect the fight against alcohol." And the 
resolutions adopted asserted that any favors to the 
alcohol capital would drive from the socialist-labor 
movement great masses of work-people and temper- 
ance folk who otherwise would stand very near to it. 

This socialist meeting, however, was a mere pro- 
log to the great citizens' gathering of Sunday evening. 
Enthusiasm was at a white heat. ''Engelbrechts- 
Marsch," the song of the national hero who whipped 
the Danes out of Sweden in the old days was sung no 
less defiantly because the enemy was the liquor dealer 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 35 

and not the foreigner. The address of the chief 
speaker, a young clergyman of the state church and one 
of the cleverest of the newer men in Sweden was a 
masterpiece of militant attack and sarcastic unveiling 
of hypocrisy. ''They are anxious about the children's 
feet/' he said. "We thank them for that but we could 
wish that their thoughtfulness went further. If they 
had considered the children's physical well-being and 
moral wants they would never have proposed a gilded 
saloon in this our 'thousand childrens' park.' I appeal 
especially for the children of the poor. When summer 
comes the well-to-do take their children into the coun- 
try. The others must stay at home. But at least 
they have the Slottskogen park. The mother can 
send the little ones there with their elder sister and 
a lunch basket. Cannot these be free anywhere from 
the sight of the drink-shop? What an example for 
their plastic little minds. Up there sit the fine ladies 
and gentlemen. Hear how they talk and see how they 
drink! How brilliant they are with their fine clothes 
and with the automobiles waiting for them when they 
are ready to move away ! Thus it appears to the 
childish fancy. 'Wait 'till I grow up/ it says. 'Then 
it will be my turn.' " 

So the protests were reiterated amid thunders of 
applause. The meeting would have been a surprise to 
any American friend of the Gothenburg System. The 
proposed drinking place was to be put in the System's 
charge. All those putative safeguards of which we 
hear so much were to be in operation. No drink 



36 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

was to be sold without food and none was to be sold to 
intoxicated persons. There was to be no pushing of 
the sale or among the buyers. Everything was to be 
orderly and decent. But the good folk of Gothenburg 
know their Pappenheimer. They have grown up under 
the System and have not made their observations at a 
distance of three thousand miles. They have learned 
the difference between phrase and actuality. 

The traveling gentlemen who stop off at Gothen- 
burg on their way between the Fjords and the Russian 
capital to examine "the System'* get their information 
from prejudiced sources. The cultivated, rich Swedes 
to whom they bear letters of introduction favor it with 
all their heart. It pays their taxes, provides charity 
money for the institutions they direct and leaves them 
their wines undisturbed. Furthermore it gratifies their 
national feeling to have a national institution examined 
and praised by tourists. But the thousands gathered 
in the Gothenburg circus were middle class and work- 
ing folk. They know the disaster these regulated 
drink-shops bring to their own strata and are not satis- 
fied that poor throats should pay the city taxes instead 
of rich pockets. ^^^ 

(O Dr. Scharffenberg calls attention to the altered at- 
titude of the Norwegian well-to-do towards spirit drinking 
from the earlier days when such of their representatives as 
Schweigaard, Fr. Stang, and Falsen were wont to speak in 
flaming words against the habit. ''What is the reason for 
this undoubted change of front? The fanaticism of the tem- 
perance party, so repellant to the educated is, of course, the 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 37 

No, the Gothenburg System does not settle the 
drink probem. Its agents violate the state's laws and 
they violate the System's regulations. Men get drunk, 
families are neglected, the insane asylums recruit their 
delirious alcoholists, the temperance party must or- 
ganize its committees to watch for breaches of law, and 
when the System's friends get especially bold and try 
to push their institution into the parks the citizens 
have to rise and agitate in self-defense just as they 
must in drink-cursed St. Louis. ^^^ Those who commend 
the Gothenburg System usually contend that parks, 
good dwellings and the like will settled the drink 
difficulty. In Gothenburg they have both model drink- 
shops and parks — the former contaminating the latter 
— and the drink nuisance is as much in evidence as else- 
where. 



ready reply. But this is only a mask. In my judgment the 
true cause of the change is to be found in the indirect pecun- 
iary interest which this class has in the Samlag's continued 
existence. The quota the Samlag pays of communal taxes 
and of public charities relieves to an undoubted extent the 
purse of the bourgeoisie. This it is which makes its judg- 
ment of drink so indulgent. There is no doubt that the great- 
est part of the Samlag's income is from the under classes." 

Dr. J. Scharfifenberg, ''Afholds Politiske Sporgsmaal." 
Part 2, p. 60. 

(2) Where, when city regulations forbade the sale of 
intoxicants "within 500 feet of the limits of Forest Park" the 
brewers* puppets in the city council decided that the sale of 
beer was not forbidden "in" the Park by the ordinance in 
question. 



38 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

But will the authorities heed the expressed wishes 
of the people? Perhaps, and perhaps not. If not 
they are but bringing fuel to their own burning. On 
Ascension day the usual temperance demonstration 
took the shape of an additional protest against the 
park saloon. It was interesting to see six thousand 
people on the drill grounds with their banners, their 
bands and their choruses. It was interesting to see 
students, socialists, White Ribboners, Good Templars 
and a huge interested public uniting in the demonstra- 
tion. Most interesting of all was it to hear a clean- 
cut prohibition address in the very home of the Sys- 
tem. The new suffrage law will sooner or later change 
the character of the upper house of the Rikstag. This 
dam being broken the waters will race away in a man- 
ner to astonish old conservatives. Sure as the 
coming of the seasons will be the advance of the tem- 
perance reform. To the System's w^inter will succeed 
the spring of local option and then the full-blown 
summer of national prohibition. 



CHAPTER IV. 
On 'Tushing the Sale." 

The anti-alcohol agitation has in late years 
brought to light 'an enormous mass of cogent fact 
thanks to the brilliant group of investigators who in all 
lands have been studying the subject. From the other 
side we get little but phrases — ''the poor man's club'* 
"the food value of alcohol/' ''the sinlessness per se of 
wine drinking." One of the most popular of these 
phrases has to do with the Gothenburg System. It 
expresses approval of that arrangment on the ground 
that the limit of profit being fixed at five per cent, the 
managers are not tempted ''to push the trade." Many 
"class conscious" representatives of our American cul- 
ture treat this as final. We question, however, the 
soundness of their contention. ^^^ 

To whom is the "pushing of the trade" with us in 
America chiefly due? Who cover the blanket sheets 
of the daily press with advertisements? Who blazon 
the merits of particular brands of beer on the billboards 



(O One keen observer alleges that the communal ava- 
rice to which the Gothenburg System ministers is more de- 
vastating morally than the private avarice of the free sale 
system. 

Ulrich-*'Goteborgssystemet och dess anvandning i Stock- 
holm och Goteborg," p. 30. 



40 THP: GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

and barn doors along the great trunk lines? Who send 
out the army of commercial travelers to drum up trade 
in every corner of the land? Who is it that constantly 
w^atches for corner locations in the large cities on 
which to place his agents? It is the retailer that does 
these things? Not at all. Most of this ''pushing'' is 
done by brewers, distillers and their immediate repre- 
sentatives. 

The retailer himself — what ''pushing'' does he do? 
Does he stand at the door and "push" in passers by? 
No. Does he urge drinkers at his bar to drink, and 
drink, and drink again? Not commonly. Does he 
have agents about his neighborhood pressing people 
to purchase his wares? No. How does he "push the 
trade." Chiefly, if at all, by breaking restrictions 
placed on his business as to Sunday-selling, closing at 
fixed hours and selling to minors. For the remedying 
of this evil only a little decent energy on the part of the 
police and of the executive is necessary. 

The Gothenburg System concerns itself only with 
the sale of drink. The entire manufacture is in the 
hands of private parties. The introduction of this 
system into the United States would not therefore af- 
fect the great alcohol capital in Milwaukee, Peoria and 
St. Louis which is chiefly responsible for the rise in our 
statistics of alcohol consumption. 

There is, however, one fact to which the friends 
of the system point with apparently justifiable satis- 
faction. This is the large number of refusals to sell 
drink to persons in an advanced or advancing stage of 



TIFR GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 4^ 

intoxication. Yet even here a little analysis dissipates 
the alleged advantage. 

In the capital city of Norway there were last year 
19.646 such refusals — certainly an imposing figure. A 
footnote in the report, however, explains that 12,931 of 
these were persons already intoxicated, the remaining 
6,627 being repulsed through fear of intoxication. In 
other words of every three persons asking for drink 
and refused, two had already obtained enough to be 
drunk. ^^^ These, therefore, can hardly be considered 
trophies of the Samlag's self-denying ordinance. 
There remain 6,627 refusals or twenty each day. This 
divided among the thirty retail drink-shops of the city 
would give two-thirds of a man refused drink daily 
in each. The money value of the drink refused to 
these twenty men would not probably bulk altogether 
larger than $5 a day, only one-half of which would be 
profit. The voluntary loss of $2.50 a day by thirty 
drinkshops is hardly enough to prove the superior 
morality of this particular excise system. 

But there are other considerations which further 
prove the futility of any theory based on these statis- 
tics of refusal to sell. One who follows present day 
investigations of the pathological workings of alcohol 



(O Someone may object that these intoxicated persons 
may have got their drink at one of the twenty-nine Christiania 
private sellers outside of the Samlag. This may be, but as 
the Samlag sells in bottle quantities sufificient to intoxicate 
completely, it is equally probable that their intoxication 
was due to the Samlag itself. 



4-.^ THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

soon discovers that occasional intoxication in its ex- 
treme form is considered by physiologists less danger- 
ous than the cumulative effect of constant moderate 
drinking. Drinkers are often seriously intoxicated in 
the original sense of the word when there is no sug- 
gestion either of violence, somnolence, or uneven gait. 
These continue to drink at the Samlag's bar. One has 
only to step into a shop of an evening to realize the ex- 
tent of this type of intoxication. In Morley's ''Life of 
Gladstone'' is a passage describing a visit the English 
statesman made to the great church historian Doel- 
linger in Munich. He wrote that after supper beer 
was freely drunk by the group of scholars who had 
been invited to meet him. He soon noticed that all 
became exceedingly voluble and that no one in talking 
answered the others. They had passed into a pathologi- 
cal state. Now this state of intoxication is normal in 
Samlag society. The writer has often noticed the 
clatter and babel of alcoholized talk and has compared 
it to the noise of twenty sewing machines in a Yiddish 
sweat-shop. But this condition and really serious con- 
dition of intoxication does not at all disconcert the bar- 
maids in a Company shop. 

In the judgment of the writer whatever successes 
restrictive legislation in Scandinavia has had are not 
due to any monopolising features peculiar to that legis- 
lation. Rather are they due to the limitation of drink- 
ing places. When our American cities have reduced 
the number of their drink-shops to the average pre- 
vailing in Norway we shall see correspondingly good 



THE GOTHENBURG SYST1^:M 43 

results. Whether these are managed by ''pushing'* 
folk from Waterford and Tipperary or five per cent 
Back Bay philanthropists will be a matter of compara- 
tive indifference. Prohibition of private distilling, 
prohibition in rural districts, prohibition by local op- 
tion in one-half the cities formerly provided with Com- 
pany shops, has in Norway done much. National pro- 
hibition of the manufacture and sale will complete the 
upward trend. 

One other fact sheds a flood of light on the inner 
workings of the Gothenburg System and the intentions 
of its directors. In looking over the table of sales 
given in the last report of the Samlag one notices that 
several of the smaller cities of Norway sell amounts of 
spirits greatly in excess of the sales in Christiania. 
Thus : 

Christiania (population 230,000) 379,799 liters. 
Trondhjem (population 35,000) 503,931 liters. Bergen 
(population 60,000) 511,185 liters. 

Why is this? Why does Trondhjem with hardly 
more than one-seventh of Ghristiania's population 
drink one-half again as much alcohol? 

The explanation lies here. Bergen and Trondhjem 
are on the west coast of Norway where the prohibition 
movement has been much more widespread than in the 
country around the capital city. Throughout the 
country and small towns all drink shops have been 
closed and the benevolent Samlag makes by far its. 
major profits in breaking the intention if not the lette. 
of the law by selling in prohibition areas. I will not 



44 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

say that they ''push the trade'' there but they certainly 
make no effort to limit it and exercise absolutely no 
control over it. It is a startling fact that nine-tenths 
of the business carried on in the Samlag shop at 
Egersund, for example, is that of flooding by rail and 
steamship districts where the people have voted out 
the poison seller/^^ The results of the Trondhjem 
Samlag's activities are pictured in the following 
clipping from the ''Namsdal Folkeblad ." 

''A meeting of 700 men and women gathered at 
Gjaelslingerne passed unanimously a resolution that 
the authorities see to it that no intoxicating liquors be 
sent to the fishing village of Gjaelslingerne during the 
fishing season. 

''This resolution was sent in accordance with the 
decision of the meeting to the Namsdalen and the 
Bergen steamship companies, to the Trondhjem Sam- 
lag for selling spirits, and to the national government.'' 

Pastor Mollerup, the village pastor, in comment- 
ing on the above, remarks: 

"It is miserable that honest people can't have 

(2) Of the traffic of this particular Samlag Dr. Hansen 
writes in "Darlenes Tidende," (17 Oct. 06.) 

''Drunknness and riot follow the Egersund brandy busi- 
ness. Infinite misery is spread by it over the country dis- 
tricts. If you doubt it go to the lailway station and see the 
number of packages sent out daily from this Samlag. And 
then notice the constant reports of fightings and disorders 
when the Egersund brandy reaches the distant farmhouses- 
Two dreadful examples have just come to us." 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 45 

peace, but that drink and drunkenness should have the 
privilege of forcing themselves in everyw^here. 

''Let us see now which is to triumph in our village, 
drink or decency ! 

"There are many who stand with hands in pockets 
and look with indifference on the misery in and around 
our fisher folks' homes. 

*'When will the hands come out of the breeches 
pockets to take up in all earnestness the fight against 
drink?" 

This village has no drink-shop, not even of the 
approved Gothenburg System type. But this fact does 
not save its people from being drenched with spirits 
from the one in Trondhjem. 

This, then, is the conclusion of the whole matter. 
Scandinavian monopolisation touches only the retail 
trade while in America it is the great manufacturing 
capital which does practically all the ''pushing/' Such 
rigid state control as would confine the action of this 
manufacturing capital to areas legally its own would 
seem to offer possible advantages pending the intro- 
duction of a general prohibitory regime. But such 
measures would tend to make prohibition by assisting 
in its local enforcement too brilliantly successful to 
please the American advocates of the Gothenburg 
System. For it does not need much shrewd guessing 
to conclude that their chief interest in the System is 
to thrust it as a stick between the spokes of the pro- 
hibition wheel. It is rarely brought out for discus- 
sion except during the height of some prohibition wave. 



46 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

The Swedish people are a remarkable people. 
By nearly all the tests of civilization they stand at the 
top. Their death-rate is at the lowest figure ; their 
statistics of literacy at the highest. Anthropological 
measurements indicate that racially they are the 
standard people. They have the culture of the Ger- 
man, the taste of the French, the religious and 
moral interests of the English. In all directions where 
intelligence is applied to handwork they stand un- 
equalled. In charm, politeness, hospitality their at- 
tractiveness is all their own. One black mark alone 
runs across this fair surface, the smudge of Swedish 
alcoholism. The Gothenburg System has not availed 
to remove it. For this they need a more mordant 
preparation — the acid of national prohibition. 



CHAPTER V. 

Expert Opinion on the Gothenburg System. 

"For a time and a country with such a distinct temper- 
ance tendency as Sweden's the Gothenburg System is played 
out. And for other countries to attempt to erect a system 
of a like pattern, dropping its money-making features, is 
likewise impossible. For since we are not worse than other 
people nor more addicted to mammon worship, the same 
temptation to coin money would soon arise elsewhere." — 
Oscar Petersson. "Sv. Rusdryckslagstiftningen," p. 66. 

Dr. H. S. Williams has given us in two numbers of 
"McClure's" a good birdseye view of the injury which 
alcohol is doing in the human body and in human society. 
In his third paper he passes to the remedy and reaches 
what is indeed a lame and impotent conclusion. Our 
old friend "the System" bobs up again. It is in his 
judgment (his judgment leans in this instance on the 
broken reed of Harvard professordom^^^) the ''scien- 
tific" sokition of the difificulty. 

CO Dr. Williams' authority is the Committee of Fifty, or 
rather three professors on that committee. 

In 1865 appeared the first of Lancereaux' studies on alco- 
holism which have continued down to 1896. Those of Binz 
on alcohol and bodily temperature cover the same period 
1869-1899. Baer's great work, "Alkoholismus" appeared in 
1878. Bunge's ''Die Alkohol Frage" in 1887; Demme's "Ein- 
fluss des x\lkohols auf den kindlichen Organismus," 1895. I" 
the same year came A. Smith's "Die Alkohol Frage und ihre 



48 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

What does he mean by ''scientific?'^ It is not easy 
to say. The ''scientific'' method of treating other 
poisons is surely quite dififerent. No doctor out of 
Asia would recommend fighting the use of opium by 
opening shops for its free sale, ten hours in the day, 
six days in the week, to anyone who could slap an 
obolus on the counter. The "scientific" method of 

Bedeutung fur Volkswohl und Volks Gesundheit'* and Le- 
grain's "L'Alcoolisme." The last half of the nineties was 
made noteworthy by Kraepelin's famous studies, ''Neuere Un- 
tersuchungen ueber die psychischen Wirkungen des Alko- 
hols" and the rest. In 1897 Delearde of the Pasteur Institute 
published his "Contribution a TEtude de I'Alcoholisme Ex- 
perimental et de son Influence sur I'lmmunite." In 1898 ap- 
peared Grotjahn's, ''Der Alkoholismus," Aschaffenburg's 
'Traktische Arbeit unter Alkohol-Wirkung" and Strumpell's 
"Ueber die Alkohol Frage vom arzlicher Standpunkt aus." 
Nicloux' valuable studies were published in 1899-1900. Lait- 
inen in 1900 issued the first of his epoch-making works "Ue- 
ber den Einfluss des Alkohols auf die Empfindlichkeit des 
Tierischen Korpers fur Infectionsstoffe." In 1901 came the 
masterly work of Rosenfeld, "Der Einfluss des Alkohols auf 
den Organismus." The net impression of these and numer- 
ous other investigations is summed up in the words of Pro- 
fessor Max von Gruber of the University of Munich: — "One 
cannot say anything too bad about alcohol.'* 

In 1904 the American Committee with its numerous col- 
lege professors and presidents, Drs. Atwater, Shedd, 
Hyde, Low, Peabody, Bowditch, Eliot, Brooks, Farnum, 
summarised the results of their investigation. They had tak- 
en every precaution, had arranged that "men of all religious 
faiths" should be represented on their body, and had hired a 
half dozen investigators to do the work for them. The pub- 



TidE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 49 

fighting diptheria would not be to allow its manufac- 
ture in all the horse-stables of the city and its sale on 
every tenth street corner. The ''scientific" method 
would be to stamp it out, put on it every prohibi- 
tion possible without regard to people's inconvenience 
or prejudices or traditions. And this surely ought to 
be the ''scientific'' method of handling what Dr. Wil- 
liams calls "the most virulent of poisons," alcohol, the 



lishers' announcement on the cover of the report alleged that 
"America's ablest thinkers" were here represented. 

What was this committee's verdict as to alcohol? Well, 
they concluded that alcohol is a food, but that sugar (suffi- 
ciently concentrated) is a poison. ''The Liquor Problem." 
Edited by Prof. F. G. Peabody (p. 32). Nothing more start- 
ling in the world of knowledge has come to daylight since 
the French physiologist, Paul Bert, after painful researches 
affirmed that oxygen is a poison for the human system. One 
is reminded of the discovery by a great scientist in one of 
Octave Mirbeau's novels that poverty is a neurosis! But this 
is not all. They laid before the American public, and it still 
circulates (1910) as the ripe thought of our American uni- 
versities, a sentence which is certain to go down in history. 
"The term poison belongs with equal propriety to coffee, 
pepper, ginger and common salt" (as to alcohol). "The 
Liquor Problem," p. 23. 

This was the sum of their wisdom on the physiological 
action of alcohol. The results of European research gave 
them no concern. 

It was to be expected that these professors should approve 
of the Gothenburg System. But why should Dr. Williams quote 
as authoritative, persons who are, to use Disraeli's phrase, 
"in such a pitiable arrears of intelligence" on the alcohol 
question? 



50 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

excrement of the yeast plant. Pro-alcohol opinion 
even of German immigrants in Cincinnati and St. 
Louis should be considered just as little as the feel- 
ings of Bombay Hindus who riot because of hygienic 
measures against the bubonic plague. For it is just 
as superstitious and even more dangerous to society. 

But perhaps he means ''scientific'' in the sense of 
approved by those who have especially studied alco- 
holism. This it is not. The best general expression 
of scientific opinion on all phases of the alcohol prob- 
lem is probably to be found in the reports and papers 
of the various International Anti-Alcohol Congresses. 

The eleventh of these Congresses met in Stock- 
holm in order that its members might have a chance 
of judging at first hand the value of this widely adver- 
tised and highly praised method of retailing alcoholic 
poisons. Every opportunity was given for inspection, 
both advocates and enemies being allowed a hearing. 
The result is summed up in the Report of the Con- 
gress which has just appeared from the press. 

Of the speakers Messrs. Ljungren, Hercod. Berg- 
mann, Forel, Haehnel, Ulrich, Helenius, vonKoch, 
Malins, and Froken Dickson spoke in strong con- 
demnation, and Scharfifenberg. Wallis, and Petersson 
were scarcely less severe. Of those favoring it Ruben- 
son is a director of the Stockholm Bolag and Milliet is 
connected with the Swiss spirits monopoly. Dr. 
Eggers, editor of "Gasthaus-Reform" the German 
Rowntree, advocated it only in its unrealized improved 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 51 

form. As it now is in Sweden he scourged it with 
scorpions. 

August Ljungren said: ''The modern alcohol 
investigation recognizes no so-called 'moderate' use of 
narcotic poisons as harmless either for the individual 
or for the race. Every system that overlooks this fact 
is doomed to failure." 

G. Yon Koch, the Swedish sociologist: 'T held 
for many years that the Gothenburg System was based 
on a sound principle but the more I have studied the 
question the more decidedly have I come to the con- 
clusion that in practise it works out altogether badly.'* 

Dr. Bergmann: 'Tn my judgment the whole 
system is obsolete and must give way to a purely pro- 
hibitive system. The only possibility of its further 
usefulness would lie in some amendment which would 
provide that all income go to purely anti-alcohol work. 
e. g. temperance-education, cure of the alcohol-sick, 
etc." 

Dr. Helenius of Finland: "Times are wholly 
changed since the System came into operation forty 
years ago. Almost everv^ school child here in the North 
now knows that alcohol is a poison. Professor Lai- 
tinen has proved to us in the present congress that 
even minute doses of alcohol corresponding to a glass 
of beer a day poison the organism. But the Gothen- 
burg System sells ordinarily and to individuals 
amounts that exceed even the so-called maximal 
amount of drink which the German advocates of 
moderation place as an hygienic limit. So if we look at 



52 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

the thing wholly without prejudice we must conclude 
that the Gothenburg System, as every other system 
of license, is an organized arrangement not only for 
forwarding vice but of actually murdering men. 

''Where is the ''keen vision'' in those who cannot 
see this or the "warm heart'' in those who defend a 
system whose managers advocate restoring the sale of 
drink in certain localities because the mere supplying 
of meals does not pay? This international congress 
should waste no more time in thrashing out this old 
straw. We can and should use our sessions for some- 
thing more profitable. 

"The talk is constantly of supplanting private 
profit by disinterested capital. The advocates of this 
idea forget that the retailer is a small person alongside 
of the great manufacturer. The great weight of the 
alcohol capital lies in the brewery and distillery. And 
the brewer and distiller will rest content as long as 
they have an outlet for the sale of their products in 
the Gothenburg System. 

"The Stockholm Anti-Alcohol Congress has ac- 
complished much. It could have no more satisfactory 
ending than to guillotine the Gothenburg System in 
so far as the System is proposed as a substitute for 
prohibition." 

Prof. Dr. Forel : "Our hearty thanks to our 
Swedish friends for their candor. That the Gothen- 
burg System in Sweden is bad we have all seen and 
it is confessed on all sides. How can alcohol be fought 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 53 

as long as the community or stock companies are in- 
terested in its sale? 

"The question is can there be a good Gothenburg 
System, one in which no one has money interest, 
which will pave the way for prohibition? 

'*Dr. Eggers thinks so. He believes that we can 
fight the alcohol interest with such an one. He con- 
fesses that as it exists in Sweden it is bad. Now the 
responsibility is on him to propose a practical system 
which will not do harm and which will lead to pro- 
hibition. 

"As it is we see that in Sweden interested parties 
reduce all rules to a dead letter and compromise the 
System all around. Personally I believe that the plan 
of Candelier (Brussels) of ^ progressive restrictive 
monopoly is preferable to 1jhe Gothenburg System. 
And yet after all I must say that the abstinence move- 
ment can only reach its goal by the use of the local 
veto.'' 

F. Haehnel of Bremen: ''The introduction of this 
system into other lands would constitute a great bar- 
rier to the healthy and speedy development of our 
cause. We have investigated it thoroughly. Our 
Swedish friends of opposing opinions have presented 
the pro and contra at length. We have had oppor- 
tunity to see the System at work and we have con- 
cluded that any hopes based on its introduction into 
Germany are gone forever. The next questions are 
whether its introduction with improvements would 
contribute to the fight against alcoholism and secondly 



54 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

whether our agitation ought to expend the effort and 
money for its introduction which might be used to 
better advantage. To both queries we answer, 'No/ 

*Tf Dr. Eggers and his associates of the 'Gasthaus- 
Reform' had used in the enlightenment of our people 
the time, effort, and money expended on their Sisyphus 
work of improving the saloon, our organizations would 
have been far stronger than now and more developed. 
With every thousand new abstainers in the land, far 
more can be accomplished against drink than can be 
brought about by changing one hundred saloons into 
Gothenburg improved drink-shops. To introduce the 
System into lands which are now without it even 
though it should be freed from its glaring weaknesses, 
would be to act unpractically, to give brewery and dis- 
tillery ground to pasture on. No opponent of alcohol 
to whatsoever party he belongs can take on himself 
the moral responsibility of tampering with this plan. 

'Tf our deliberations today have led to showing 
clearly that in the future w^e should cease from experi- 
menting with this arrangement concerning which we 
hear at home such diverse opinions, they will have been 
profitable. No flirtation with the System will avail. 
Only the enlightenment of the people will count 
against the alcohol capital. I beg our Germans 
especially to avoid splitting or checking our movement 
by seeking to introduce the Gothenburg System.'' 

Thus far those who are best fitted to estimate the 
worth of the System. A few words more about Dr. 
^IVilliams' article. 



THE (,()rili:\liL'R(^, SYSTEM 55 

In the leading- paper of Sweden, "Svenska Dag- 
bladet" (June 22-'o9) this article is placed with others 
in a review of ill-informed American judgments con- 
cerning Sweden and Swedish culture. Its unreliability 
as to fact is measured by a sample statement. "This 
enthusiast for the Gothenburg System tells us that 
it has reduced the number of distilleries from 23,000 
to 132 greatly to the advantage of temperance. He 
does not seem to know first, — that the System has 
nothing whatever to do with the manufacturing regu- 
lations : — secondly, that this reduction is due wholly 
to the drastic law of 1852, — thirdly, that the 132 dis- 
tilleries produce more brandy than the entire 23,000 
home distilleries ever did." 

The decrease in the number of drink-shops is 
susceptible to a similar analysis according to Mr. 
Petersson, one of the speakers at this Congress. The 
decrease from 1865 when the Swedish Bolags were 
introduced to 1895 ^^'^^ 1,052, a little more than one- 
half. But 724 of these were life licenses which fell in 
at the death of their owners. Only 328 closed saloons 
in thirty years can be credited to the Gothenburg 
System. Of the sixty-five saloons closed in the next 
ten years only thirty-six have been closed by the Sys- 
tem. They have beaten this record in Indiana in 
three months ! 

Further it must be remembered that many holders 
of licenses presumably wath the Bolag's permission 
split their license and run really two drink-shops, first 
and second class, on the one permit. Mr. Petersson 



56 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

thinks it more than probable that the official diminu- 
tion of drinking places has been outbalanced by an in- 
crease through such devices. 

As to consumption. In i860 the curve of Swedish 
consumption went down to four liter per capita, a point 
to which it has never descended since. ^^^ This was five 
years before the Gothenburg System was introduced 
into Sweden. Whatever variation there may have been 
from year to year in consumption of alcohol is probably 
due in both Sweden and Norway to the alternation of 
good and bad times. This is indicated by the curious 
fact that Denmark's curve, and here there is no Samlag, 
varies almost precisely as the curves of the lands with 
Samlags, though on an average higher rate of con- 
sumption. Mr. Petersson believes that it is very 
doubtful if any credit at all can be given to the Sys- 
tem and bases this opinion on four factors, two posi- 
tive and two negative : — 

1. The undoubted effect which the tremendous 
temperance movement in Sweden since 1870 must 
have worked. 

2. The similar results of the labor movement 
which has transformed in a large degree the wage- 
working class. 

(i) O. Petersson, "Svenska rusdryckslagstiftningen och 
Goteborgs-systemet," p. 52. This fact is conveniently dis- 
guised, for example, in Bertillon's "L'Alcoolisme et les 
moyens de le combattre," where the statistic is given for 
1856-60 as 10.7 liters of 50 per cent spirits, which contrasts 
pleasantly with the lower consumption of y.^i for 1902! 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 57 

3. The persistent refusal of the System to re- 
spond to petitions for restrictions which labor-unions, 
temperance societies and communal authorities have 
sent in to them. 

4. The development in the System of subletting 
of sale, with its consequent abuses. 

In comparing the alcohol consumption of the 
three Scandinavian lands we find that since 1870 it 
has dropped in Denmark where sale is free: .8 liter 
per head for all forms of alcohol and 1.9 liters for 
brandy alone. 

In Sweden the fall has been .15 and 1.3 liters re- 
spectively. 

In Norway it has been .85 and i liter per head. 

It is hard to see that this proves any particular ad- 
vantage in the legislation of any of the three lands. 
Certainly it does not prove the superiority of the 
Gothenburg System, for Sweden which has this system 
alone, shows up not only worse than Norway with the 
System plus a defective prohibitory arrangement, but 
worse than Denmark with free sale, i. e. of course as 
far as decline in consumption in thirty-nine years is 
used as a test. 

Dr. Williams prefers the System to prohibition, 
first, because prohibition would destroy an immense 
economic interest; secondly, because masses of people 
are so accustomed to alcohol that it could not be taken 
from them. 

But how futile such reasonings. The alcohol in- 
dustry is wealth-destroying, not wealth-producing. 



58 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

To annihilate it would be but to put out a great con- 
flagration. When the Reformation closed the English 
monasteries it took some of them, notably the great 
monastic complex at Reading, and worked them into 
road metal. If the same were done with the breweries 
of Milwaukee and St. Louis' wealth would be con- 
served rather than destroyed. One might quote 
Herault de Sechelles' ''Ruinons nous; nous soyons 
libres," if the facts would not turn the quota- 
tion into a jest. The ''ruin" which would send 
two billions yearly now spent for poison into legiti- 
mate channels of trade would be a ruin beneficent be- 
yond the best dreams of prosperity. 

As to the second contention we can only say that 
measures must first be taken to protect the well from 
alcohol sickness. Of the already infected Prof, von 
Bunge says : ''Numbers of men drink only a moderate 
glass but hang to that glass as desperately as the 
morphinist to his syringe." Such must be cured of 
their cravings as the morphinist of his peculiar sick- 
ness by removing the narcotic drug from their reach. 
"Old prisoners leave their cells unwillingly." Never- 
theless the beer Bastille must down ! Sooner or later 
the alcoholist Latudes will become accustomed to their 
new freedom. 

But while the finical are questioning the feasi- 
bility of prohibition the broad masses of the people 
whose instincts are so often right are acting. The 
success of the radical method is being proved in an 
ever-widening area in America. 



TiiR G()riiP:xiiuRG svsrKM 59 

One recalls the philosopher in Tristram Shandy 
who answered a sceptic's disputings as to the reality 
of motion by rising on his legs and walking across the 
room. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A Bridge of Wood Over a River of Fire. 

**If we liken it (drink) to a terrible monster, the Swedish 
system may be said to be the chain round its neck. This 
chain cannot prevent it entirely from doing damage but it 
can hamper its progress to some extent." "Morality rather 
than profit is the principle of the Gothenburg System." — 
Mr. S. Wieselgren, the System's historian. 

Mere statistical and financial accounts of the 
Gothenburg System are not sufficient. They give little 
idea of the flood of misery which year in and year out 
flows from its hundreds of drink-shops. To rights 
thinking people the weightiest of all questions is what 
effect does the sale of drink under the System have on 
the distress of families, on the struggles of mothers, 
on the miseries of the alcohol-sick, on the deprivation 
the children endure. Is the Gothenburg System an 
alleviating force in the unending tragedy of alcohol 
suffering? 

''Not to any appreciable degree,'' — is the only hon- 
est answer one can give who has lived in sight of it 
any length of time. 

Not that statistics, either, when objectively used 
give a flattering picture of the System. Take 
Stockholm for example. The System has been in op- 
eration there for many years. Do we see constant im- 
provement in the matter of drunkenness? We do not. 



thp: cioriiKXBURii system 6i 

The police report for 1909 has just been published. 
The number of arrests for drunkenness went up to the 
huge total of 15,218. The increase has been pretty con- 
stant. Thus in 1902, 11,586; in 1903, 12,598; in 1904, 
13-065; in 1905, 13,942; 1906, 12,291 ; 1908, 15,147. And 
the police in Stockholm are not at all severe in their 
administration. This represents only a portion of the 
total drunkenness of the city. One sees more reelers 
in Swedish cities generally not merely than in Amer- 
ican prohibition cities but in drink dominated centers 
like Boston and Chicago. If you doubt it saunter along 
Postgaten. Gothenburg, the evening before the Ameri- 
can sailings. You will realize then what the peculiar 
Swedish vice is and how little the patented Gothen- 
burg arrangement has done to check it. 

A champion of the System and general director in 
its management, Mr. Wieselgren says : "Experience 
shows that a considerable number of these companies 
seem to be without any conception of the System's 
true purpose and totally without shame in their viola- 
tions of its spirit. "^^^ Nothing shows more clearly the 
justice of this unsparing judgment than the records 
which the police of both Stockholm and Gothenburg 
keep of the number of times individuals are arrested 
for drunkenness in a given year. If any practical at- 
tempt had been made to prevent drunkards from fall- 



^0 In his "Kunna utskankningsbolagen tjena nykter- 
heten." Quoted in Ulrich "Goteborgs systemet och dess an- 
vandning i Stockholm och Goteborg, p. iq. 



62 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

ing again and again such a statistic as the following 
would be impossible. 

For 1905 in Stockholm there were: 

1,207 arrested 2 times; 429 arrested 3 times; 203 
arrested 4 times; 119 arrested 5 times; 62 arrested 
6 times; 53 arrested 7 times; 32 arrested 8 times; 25 
arrested 9 times; 13 arrested 10 times; 11 arrested 11 
times; 9 arrested 12 times; 8 arrested 13 times; and 
so on up to one who had been arrested 30 times in a 
year for drunkenness. 

In Gothenburg we get the same picture : 

799 arrested 2 times; 283 arrested 3 times; 124 
arrested 4 times ; 78 arrested 5 times ; 40 arrested 6 
times; 25 arrested 7 times; 22 arrested 8 times; and 
48 from 10 to 25 times. All the claimed safeguards 
against drunkenness are mere waste paper. And this 
is not the worst feature of the police report. Of the 
army of Stockholm drunkards in 1905, 1,065 were 
women. To insist that a system yielding such fruits 
is better than the Maine law is to make oneself a super- 
lative illustration of "the will to believe.*' 

There is on the Ponte Sisto in Rome a mortuary 
chapel on the walls of which bones are arranged in 
stars and crosses and arabesques. There are decora- 
tions of childrens skulls, ribs in circles, finger bones 
in patterns — all decently ordered. 

But can such order change the face of death? 

Just as little can regulation and restraints of a 
greater or less effectiveness gloss over the repulsive- 
ness of an institution for selling intoxicants, that is 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 63 

toxic, poisonous drinks. In all essential respects the 
drink-shop of Scandinavia is the same as elsewhere. It 
ruins and degrades and sickens and kills. It closes at 
7 o'clock Saturday night as cemeteries do and is 
supposed at least like them to be quiet and well- 
ordered. But it still remains a charnel-house. 

Let us pass to illustrations. This is taken from 
the leading paper of Gothenburg the "Handel och 
Sjofarts Tidning." 

'THE UXEMPLOYED HUNGER AND THE SALE OF 

DRINK. 

"Those who passed this morning through Forsta 
Langgaten must have seen a painful sight. Just out- 
side a drinkshop near Masthugg Torg there was 
gathered a group of ragged, wretched men. They were 
there to purchase a supply of brandy with which to 
celebrate properly the present Easter holidays. It 
will not do to say that they were people who had suf- 
ficient to make such expenditures. On the contrary 
they bore the marks of extreme poverty and misery. 
The crowd was so great that it was necessary to send 
for the police to keep order and to force them into line* 

*'At a time when the press generally is urging all 
charitably disposed to show sympathy with those out 
of work and when a special organization is being 
formed to deal with the present distress it seems 
highly regrettable that men should use for drink their 
hard earnings and in some cases what they have 
begged. It is no wonder that the generous public gets 
•hard-hearted towards poverty when they see a long 



64 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

line of tattered fellows waiting for the drink shop to 
open ! 

**And this at a time when there is so much suffer- 
ing and lack of employment ! 

'*The drinkshops should be closed! 

"Signed, A Citizen.— April 8, '08." 

The writer is living far up in the Gudbrandsdal. 
Complaints are there being made of the great activity 
the Samlag in Lillehammer has displayed in the 
holidays just past in flooding the valley with drink. 
One writes from Tretten of *'the pyramid of brandy 
bottles which this particular shop has sent into the 
villages spreading everywhere trouble and sorrow in 
the homes and destroying Christmas joy.'' He sug- 
gests that there be a special car of detention on the 
trains to handle the holiday victims of this Samlag. 
'Tt is highly inhuman," he adds, ''to leave these in- 
toxicated men by themselves in the railway stations 
during the bitter winter nights/' 

Does that not read differently from Rowntree and 
Sherwell's idyll? 

The following is from the recently published re- 
mains of the well-know Pastor Mortensen of Christi- 
ania : 

'' 'How dreadful,' I heard some one at my side call 
out the other day as I passed through one of Christi- 
ania's main streets. The remark brought me suddenly 
to myself as I was walking rapidly, immersed in 
thought. I turned about to see what the occasion of 
the outcry might be. 



Tllb: (.orilENBURG SYSTEM 65 

"The sight hlled me with horror and the deepest 
compassion. The whole street w^as filled with men. 
Jn the middle of a dense crowd I detected two police- 
men, who were dragging to the station an intoxicated 
woman. Drunken, nay she was mad with drink, the 
froth stood on her mouth while she shouted and 
screamed the vilest songs and the wildest oaths. How 
did she look? Her whole appearance bore the stamp of 
a drunkard at the end of her course although she was 
clearly not over forty years of age. Her face was 
sw^ollen wnth drink, her eyes shot with blood, her hair 
dangling loose in the wind. But her clothing! It was 
torn and hanging in shreds and every struggle wnth the 
police made it w^orse. She had been taken out of one 
of the city's drinkholes and now was being dragged 
stationward through the streets.'' 

Prof. Forel has said somewhere that future genera- 
tions will look on our drink customs with the same 
horror with which we regard the Inquisition. The re- 
pulsive scenes one meets with under the regulated drink 
regime in Scandinavia will constitute no exception. 

Here is how the System set the joy-bells in the 
North a ringing at Easter-tide, 1909. 

"Verdandisten'' reports: 'Tn many places the 
evening before Easter long rows could be seen waiting 
at the doors of the brandy-shops for a chance to pur- 
chase. The consequences appeared later. 

''Two persons at the raihvay station at Lindome 
were seriously stabbed by a drunken man Easter Sun- 
dav. 



66 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

''K. E. Anderson was killed by his intoxicated 
brother Easter even when visiting the parental home 
at Lyckeby. 

'*E. J, Karlsson a Hardemo shoemaker was ar- 
rested for having stabbed a neighbor Easter evening. 

*7- W. Sunden of Boras was stabbed by a neigh- 
bor. Both were drunk. 

*'A laborer from Gothenburg got drunk Easter 
Sunday and was drowned at Surte. 

''A seventeen year old boy, Gustaf Lofvendal, on 
Good Friday stabbed a drinking companion named Bo- 
man/' 

''An iron worker's family in Avesta/' remarks the 
same paper, ''has been in a dreadful state. The mother 
spent most of her time in the drink-shop in company 
with a farm-laborer she had taken up with. Five 
children were left without care and the father finding 
things unendurable disappeared. 

"Finally the people of the town could stand it no 
longer and determined upon a demonstration. A 
great company of citizens, men and women, old and 
young, collected around the house where the children 
had been left with a drunken butcher while the mother 
was in the drinkshop. The butcher was summoned 
out but thought it best to run, and run he did, head over 
heels, pursued by the crowd. He was at last taken 
into custody by the police. 

"The people now hurried to the drink-shop, pulled 
out the farm laborer and gave him a thorough beating. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 67 

The woman was treated to a severe lecture and sent 
home. 

''After this resolute action the people of Avesta 
went each and every one about his own business with 
a light heart/' 

Query. — How did the Gothenburg System *'solve 
the drink problem'' in this case? 

In many places one sees posters pasted opposite 
an Utskankning or Company saloon, urging men to 
keep away from the place. These have been put up by 
friends of the alcohol-sick to restrain them from further 
infection. But how futile! It is like appealing to the 
public to keep away from a villainous drain which 
year in and year out spreads typhoid. Suppression of 
the nuisance and not ''suasion*' of the sick is the thing 
required. 

Another significant indication of the System's 
failure to root out alcoholism is to be found in the fol- 
lowing notice which one reads in every third class 
raihvay coupe in Norway : 

"Warning! In accordance with section seven of 
the law of July 24, 1894, drunkenness on the train is a 
punishable oflfense, "Travelers are urged to report 
any occurences of this sort immediately to the con- 
ductor." 

I do not recall where similar signs are posted in 
Swedish railways. They are not needed to remind one of 
the omnipresent vice. The writer has made the loni; 
twenty hours' ride from Stockholm to Jamtland many 
times. One of the invariable incidents of the trip has 



68 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

been the drunken rioting at the end of the train. Young 
roughs without collars, unshaven, with coat-collar 
turned up, nails in deep mourning, bearing all the 
stigmata of a degraded alcoholism the more striking 
because of the refinement and order everywhere notice- 
able among this the most highly civilized people in 
the world, — with whisky bottles sticking out of 
pockets, swearing, pushing, quarreling — what a frontis- 
piece would they not make for some eminently proper 
professorial essay on the Gothenburg System. 

Verner von Heidenstamm is one of the most 
popular novelists of present day Sweden. He is by no 
means a temperance agitator. Yet it is clear that he 
is not satisfied with the civilizing tendencies of the 
System. In a paper before me I notice the report of 
an address he delivered Midsummer Day at Wadstena 
to a large gathering of Swedish young people who 
were working for tree planting and other public in- 
terests. 

*'Why is it,'' said this shrewd and accomplished 
man of the world, ''that it is difficult to plant allees 
of shade trees? It is because drunken youths on Sat- 
urday and Sunday nights insist as they go homeward 
on breaking down the young trees. (The howling, 
swearing Saturday night drunkard is a characteristic 
feature of Swedish life as every one who has passed a 
few months in the country well knows; . In Switzer- 
land one can journey for miles under rows of fruit- 
trees and even in vast swarming Paris flower masses 
and grass mats can be left out safely without fear of 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 69 

ruffianism. But when our countryman has taken his 
drink the barbarian in him rises to the surface and he 
immediately feels impelled to injure or destroy. I 
know nothing under the sun more stupid than a 
drunken Swede. Drink disorders him in a specially 
noxious way. Here is one reason more why we should 
take off our hats" — (to the Gothenburg System with its 
restraining and moralizing influence? Not a bit of it!) 
*'to the flags of the temperance organizations on which 
are inscribed in letters of gold the future's pro- 
gramme.'' 

One could wash that a Gothenburg cinemato- 
graph showing the System in action could be sent 
about New York drawing rooms and the lecture-rooms 
of American universities where it is believed in and 
praised. It would be a vivid panorama of fighting, 
reeling, seedy, depraved victims of alcohol. One finds 
material at every turn. My eye lights on this from 
''Svenska Dagbladet" (June 4, '09) : 

"A tailor from Multro named Hilbom visited to- 
gether with his wife Solleftea, where they purchased 
brandy. On reaching home they began a wild carousal. 
Late in the night he lay down on the floor and went to 
sleep. In the morning he was found dead. The home, 
remarked the local paper, exhibited a dreadful sight. 
The wife, the hired man, and the housekeeper lay in 
their respective beds still drunk after the night's orgies. 
In the open air just outside the house a sister of Hil- 
bom lay in a drunken stupor close to an apprentice also 
unconscious." 



70 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

When the Hugenots sent the Grand Monarque a 
pitiable appeal for relief, recounting their dreadful dis- 
tresses, he wrote to the bottom merely ''Neant." |''It 
is nothing.") The professors and theorists will perhaps 
say the same here. "Such things occur everywhere;' 
they will object, shrugging the shoulder just per- 
ceptibly and adjusting their glasses. But it is for the 
future to see to it that they do not occur everywhere, 
that alcoholism become as rare as leprosy is or as small- 
pox bids fair to be. We have beaten the lepra bacillus. 
We shall yet down the yeast plant. But we can only 
do it by stopping its manufacture, by leveling to the 
ground the beer brewery ''beside which,'' as Dr. 
Moebius the Leipzig psychiatrist solemnly said after a 
profound study of alcohol and its workings, ''the man 
whohas murdered a multitude is an innocent orphan 
boy."<^> 

It is generally known that the Company System is 
more stringent in its regulations and in its workings in 
Norway than in Sweden. If it had produced social re- 
sults of an advanced type anywhere we should expect 



(i) "Ein Massenmorder ist ein Waisenknabe gegen eine 
Bier-brauerei." So we have Ghingis-Khan, Alva, Tilly, Ab- 
dul Hamid and Adolphus Busch. Thirty-five thousand pair of 
eyes were handed Agha Mohammed Khan on platters after the 
sack of Kerman. The fifty thousand dollar bills presented to the 
Germanic Museum by Harvard's beer Maecenas represented 
doubtless as many diseased livers. Is it not time that the 
Puritan motto ''Christo et Ecclesiae" give place to the 
pagan "Non olet" of the Emperor Vespasian? 



THR GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 71 

to see them in the capital city of Norway where Nor- 
wegian culture and Norwegian intelligence touch their 
highest point But what is the case? Christiania is a 
city of 230,000 inhabitants. In the Norwegian review 
*'Kringsjaa" (July, 1908) Dr. Paul Winge discusses its 
criminality. He says that on a low estimate 4,000 men 
and 2,000 women support themselves as criminals. In- 
cluding children and other dependents there are 10,000 
persons in Christiania belonging to the criminal strata 
of society, or nearly 5 per cent of the whole population. 
And by this he means not occasional criminals like the 
intoxicated but predatory criminals. 

There is of course no prohibitory community with 
such a record, not even Portland or Bangor, which. 
"New England's greatest newspaper'' has so often 
adduced as examples of the terrible results of prohibi- 
tion. Alcohol from the Company store works in pre- 
cisely the same way as alcohol from the American 
corner saloon. It produces a parasitical criminal 
class.<^^ 

But what are its effects on the better situated? 
Are they restraining or enlightening? Just take a 
look at the porcine faces of the punch drinkers gathered 
about the little round, marble-topped tables of the 

(-) A Christiania paper describes what are called "nose- 
drinkers'' as far as I know a specialty of that city. These 
pour out their brandy into the hollow of the hand and snuff 
it into the nose in quick drafts. Intoxication in this way is 
soon attained. 



y2 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Cafe du Nord. in Stockholm. How gross the type!^^^ 
Swedish charm has at last evanesced! The evolution 
of the Swedish student youth — courteous and delight- 
ful as ephebi of classic Athens — into such monstrosi- 
ties, 

''Dewlapped like bulls 

Whose throats have hanging to them 

Wallets of flesh'^ 

is a crime against culture peculiar to Swedish drink- 
selling. No drinkers on earth, under whatsoever sys- 
tem degenerated, are more repulsively goitred. One. 
recalls the Iceland bird, which is so fat that with a 
wick in its throat it burns as a candle through half a 
winter's night. There would be no need of arc lamps 
if the punch drinkers of the Cafe du Nord were lighted 
and placed about Norrmalms Torg ! 

''Norske Intelligenser Sedler'' gives a picture of 
recent Norwegian student excesses which indicates 
how backward public opinion is in certain circles of 
Christiania as well, after forty years of the System. 

'^Drunken students/' it remarks, ''began the 
seventeenth of May (Norway's National Independence 
Day, the anniversary of the Eidsvold Convention) 
with howling and yelling in the streets. The police 



(3) To such cafes the system delegates the right of re- 
tailing intoxicants under conditions much the same as those 
prescribed for the regular drinking places. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 73 

were obliged to confiscate their banners. Some joined 
themselves to the brigade-band and marched to the 
palace, rioting all the way. Numbers were pulled into 
the Pipervik police station and fined." 

Again on the 4th of June the same paper writes: 

''The conduct of young students at St. Hans 
Haugen yesterday evening was so rowdyish and low as 
to be almost incredible. One would have thought 
them the scum of society rather than the scions of 
educated families. A great gang of these drunken 
students collected on the hill, where they yelled and 
rioted and annoyed the restaurant servants. Finally 
they were ejected. But they continued outside, hoot- 
ing and howling, annoying the animals in the Zoo- 
logical collection, throwing beer mugs into the bear- 
pits, etc. The attendants secured a policeman but he 
was immediately surrounded by the gang, who threw 
gravel and stones at him. Thirteen of them were 
finally arrested. Many of these represented the best 
families of the city. The police declared that they 
conducted themselves as hatefully as the worst hooli- 
gans they had ever had to deal with.'' 

''Student excesses,'' one wall say. "Young blood!" 
"Liable to happen anywhere." 

Yes, anywhere where alcohol is sold. Against 
alcoholized vulgarity neither the Gothenburg Sys- 
tem nor academic culture is a safe prophylactic. 
Rather we may say Samlag drink neutralises all the 
restraining and enlightening values of academic cul- 
ture. The present case ought to have shown the Sys- 



74 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

tem at its best. Wines, light-beer, cognac, student- 
punch, sold under theoretically satisfactory conditions 
to young men of high breeding and selected blood, 
trained in all the culture the cultivated Norwegian 
capital could give them — and the result? Negro min- 
ers, Italian sewer diggers, Kanuck lumber men, — the 
most unprivileged and untrained elements in our he- 
terogeneous American society would if kept from al- 
cohol show up better. But ply them with the drink 
which the Norwegian students procured from Gothen- 
burg shops or their affiliated bars and they would soon 
sink to the same cultural level. 

In striking contrast are the manners of Nor- 
wegian students who have been brought up not in the 
densely alcoholized atmosphere of Christiania but in 
the alcohol-free surroundings of a small Minnesota 
town. 

In 1906 a glee club of Norwegian-American col- 
lege boys, the St. Olaf Chorus, toured the mother coun- 
try. Prof. Kildahl in recounting their triumphant pro- 
gress said: "It awakened general surprise when it was 
known that our boys drank neither wine, beer, nor 
brandy. Other guests at the receptions usually drank 
strong liquors. If I had taken one-fourth of what my 
neighbors did I should have been under the table. It 
seems to be an understood thing in Norway that at 
every social function there shall be a great quantity 
of liquors on the table and the waiters see to it that 
the glasses are kept full." 



CHAPTER VII. 

Where the Poor Man's Clubbed. 

"With the wife out washing, her rub, rub, rub, 
Beats time for the songs of the poor man's club. 
If you don't need clothes and can live without grub 
Why just go and join the poor man's club." 

— Song of the Anti-Saloon movement. 

Many years ago the Norwegian poet, Ibsen, in a 
speech at Trondhjem declared that for the regenera- 
tion of society we must look to tw^o classes, — the 
women and the wage-workers. This might be called 
as far as the movement against alcohol is concerned 
a veritable prophecy. 

It was the joint effort of women and working 
men which placed on the Finnish code the first na- 
tional prohibition law in existence. In Sweden the 
working men have shown themselves of like mind. 
The National Socialist Congress of last year was no- 
table from the fact that a prohibition declaration w^as 
forced through by the rank and file against the protest 
of the more fearful and perhaps less conscientious 
leaders. In Norway this year at Hamar only the 
threat of resignation which Jeppesen and other 
leaders made prevented the convention from com- 
mitting the party to the same policy. The writer 
was interested in reading the devices borne by social- 



76 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

ists in the first of May demonstration in Christiania. 
There were "Down with Altar and Throne/' 
''War is Murder of Brothers/' and ''Away with In- 
toxicants/' Not a suggestion of "The Poor Man 
Should have his Beer/' or "Save Us Our Tidy, Well- 
regulated Cheerful Club, the Samlag Shop, Where 
There Is No Pushing, Where Nobody Makes Any 
Money Out of Us, Where Everything Is As Delight- 
ful As It Is Disinterested, Where Excess Is Never 
Seen, Where There Is An Atmosphere Of Correcti- 
tude Unequalled Out Of Boston/' 

No, the real wage-worker knows better about the 
System shops. My eye lighted recently on the de- 
scription of one such in "Verdandisten" — the organ of 
the Swedish temperance socialists. Those who make 
it a point "to see the best that glimmers through the 
worst" are welcome to do wath it what they can. 

"In the country mother earth produces as in early 
times without regard to the hard competition which 
rules in our cities. The peasant harrows and sows and 
harvests not without labor and sweat. Now the barns 
are full and the products of the soil and pasture ready 
for city markets. Our countryman shall now get his 
reward for his long toil. 

"It is Saturday and market day in the city. In 
long rows stand the carts, barrels, and baskets of the 
country-folk. Loads of straw and hay, grain, eggs, 
potatoes, fish and meat are all about. It is a long 
way to market and profits are considerably lessened 
when one reckons the time spent in going and coming. 



rilE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM y^ 

but as our proverb says, 'Flying crows pick up a 
dinner; sitting ones get nothing.' Purchasers are 
numerous and much business gets itself done. The 
wagons are empty again. 

At one corner of the market stands a notorious 
drink-shop, a veritable scourge for the peasants. At 
the unpainted tables sit helpless men, some sleeping, 
some shouting monotonously painful melodies, some 
swearing and striking their clenched fists so that the 
beer mugs are upset and their contents run in streams 
mingling with vomit and urine on the floor. At the 
bar stands the girl opening bottles. Money runs in a 
steady stream into her till. It is the billowy grain 
fields, the products of the dairy, the hard weeks of 
labor which now as ringing coin pass into the drawer. 

''The money begins to give out. The drinkers 
can get no more drink. This angers them and the fight- 
ing begins. They push each other out. The police ap- 
pear and drag one after another to the lockup. Some 
are carried to the wagons, the horses are untied and 
start ofif on the run, irritated with cold and the inces- 
sant whippings which they now receive. Meanwhile 
fights started in the drink shops are continued in the 
market place.'' 

What a picture of ''the poor man's club !" In the 
Paris colloquial such a place is called a bludgeon 
'unassomoir.'' It is where men are "assome" — 
Knocked down, mauled, oppressed'' as the diction- 
ary defines the word. I suppose no one ever 
heard a genuine wage-worker use the phrase "the poor 



7» THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

man's club. It drops usually from the mouths of 
"delicate handed 
snowy banded'* 
"society" rectors or of professors in our seaboard uni- 
versities. There is an interesting passage in Prince 
Krapotkine's ''Memoirs'' in which the writer describes 
the uneasiness which the work people on his Siberian 
expeditions always felt when drawing near to a town. 
They feared the temptation to drink and the danger of 
arrest. If they had known what the modern alcohol 
investigation has revealed their fear would have been 
far more intense. 

The System out of its opulence has been putting 
up well-built drink-shops in parts of Stockholm where 
tourists are apt to wander. These are, however, merely 
the Potemkin villages of Gothenburgism. Leave Grev 
Thuregaten and Malmskilnadsgaten and go into the 
mean streets. They you find means shops to match. 

To call the saloon, whether of the American or of 
the Scandinavian type, the working man's club is an 
insult to those who in the last analysis hold up our 
whole social structure as the tortoise the Hindu cos- 
mos. That after his frugal meal of "potatoes and 
racket gravy" he should have no place to go to except 
these dens where his liver is hobnailed and his kid- 
neys rotted, where he is sold tuberculosis^^^ and men- 

(i) To frequent a drink-shop is one of the most certain 
ways of receiving frequent and large doses of infection (of 
consumption and cancer.) — Sir Victor Horsley ''Alcohol and 
the Human Body," p. 349. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 79 

tally stupified is a shameful indictment of our social 
arrangements. Until we can do better every basement 
in the school and other public buildings of our Ameri- 
can cities should be fitted up as rest and recreation 
places for the humbler public. 

The System in its relation to the poorer strata of 
society stands for two things — narcosis of the masses 
and taxes from the masses. Whatever the feeling in 
America, in Europe where the thought of the revolu- 
tion always lingers in society's subliminal conscious- 
ness, the drinkshop with its quieting and deadening in- 
fluence is undoubtedly looked upon with favor by the 
privileged. It is no accident that the fight against the 
English excise reform of 1908 was led by Lord Roth- 
schild. Dr. Blocher speaking in October, 1900, to a 
thousand workmen in V^ienna was stopped by the po- 
lice when he began on the stupefying effects of alco- 
hol on the masses. The case of Dr. Froehlich is even 
more striking. A physician in the Vienna General 
Hospital, a convinced socialist, a speaker of great 
power and warm personality, to his efforts have been 
chiefly due the great growth of abstinence principles 
among the proletariat of Austria. Four years ago he 
started on a lecture tour in Germany. His agitation 
was on purely anti-alcoholist lines, — not a whisper of 
revolutionary socialism. Yet in Dresden, Breslau and 
other places he w^as forbidden to speak and at a great 
meeting in the English garden in Kiel was interrupted 
by gendarmerie and ordered out of Prussia in three 
days. 



8o THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

But besides furnishing a social chloroform, the 
Gothenburg System in common with excise arrange- 
ments generally, deflects taxation from the rich to 
shoulders least able to bear it. The income from 
this source is in most Swedish towns and cities the 
largest single payment made/^^ This is in itself a pretty 
good statement of the System's failure as a temperance 
institution. And it must be remembered that by this 
tax the poorer classes are victimised^-^ — self-victim- 
ised if you will though there is much in our social ar- 
rangements to explain and even excuse the fact. Not 
long since, for example, a general strike was declared 
in Helsingborg. The leaders ordered a boycott on all 

(i) This pecuniary prosperity gives a prestige to public 
poisoning which is positively immoral. The writer recalls 
visiting a fine new church in Lysekil largely constructed by 
the profits of the alcohol shop. The founder of the shop had 
been given a free pew in perpetuam and was the only citizen 
so honored. 

(2) ''The Gothenburg System has degenerated into an 
institution for squeezing the poorest of our population 
through their thirst for drink in order to get money to ease 
the tax burden of the well-situated classes. It has altogether 
lost its philanthropic character. It keeps the wage-worker 
on a low cultural and social plane. It is a typical illustration 
of communal greed and selfishness. The most scandalous 
inhumanity thrives year after year and the worst breaches of 
law are practised in the Company's drink-shops. Away with 
the blood money of the Gothenburg System! Away with 
this thoroughly corrupted institution!" 

Ulrich: "Goteborgs Systemet och dess Anvandning i 
Stockholm och Goteborg," p. 27- 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 8i 

the shops of the System and posted pickets at the door 
of each saloon to urge workingmen not to enter. The 
result on the day reported — June ii, 1908, — was that 
the money taken over the bars of the city was not 
enough to pay the bar-girls wages for the day. 

If such a strike against drink could be made per- 
manent, and this is w^hat the Swedish socialists have 
declared for by their advocacy of prohibitory legisla- 
tion, other sources of taxation would have to be tap- 
ped. It is this indeed which is leading many Swedish 
temperance workers to mobilise behind Henry 
George's theory in preparation for an attack on the 
unearned increment. ^^^ And it is doubtless for this 
reason that vested interests find the Gothenburg Sys- 
tem so "satisfactory in its moral workings/' 

At the present writing there is a noticeable move- 
ment among the work people in Sweden towards peti- 
tioning for some slight relief from the blessings the 
System brings. The early closing of the shops in 
Gothenburg during the present season of industrial 
depression has given hope of similar action elsewhere. 
The White Ribbon Society of Stockholm has received 
a petition for forwarding to the Bolag authorities from 
women and children of wageworkers for Sunday clos- 
ing of the drink places in that city as well as for the 
suppression of the sale of drink when food is not sold 
and for early closing on Saturday. Encouraged by 



^j) See Hansson's "Jordvardebeskattning i stallet for 
Rusdrycksbeskattning," pp. 21, 22. 



82 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

early closing in their city, Gothenburg workmen have 
asked for one o'clock closing on every day in the w^eek. 
This has been declined on the ground that said petition 
''has not come from suitable parties/' 

In Landskrona an association of the unemployed 
has sent to the magistrates this petition. 

''Our union of unemployed observes v^^ith pain 
how many persons in this period of need and depres- 
sion continue to buy drink with money they need for 
other and useful purposes, and respectfully beg the 
magistracy to seek some way of preventing this state 
of things. Best would it be in our judgment if the 
drinkshops were all closed during this slack period 
but if this is too radical, a limitation of hours would be 
of great advantage. 

'Tn many a w^orkingman's home the need is far 
greater than it otherwise w^ould be because the wages 
are, week after week, spent for drink instead of for 
family supplies. To appeal to the better instincts of 
the drinker does not avail. Such are no longer in pos- 
session of a free will. They cannot desist from drink- 
ing. 

"For this reason the authorities should at least 
limit the hours of sale and the quantity any given in- 
dividual can buy. This is especially necessary at a 
time of want and unemployment. Well would it be 
if at all times drinkers should be obliged to abstain 
from a low and coarse pleasure which increases their 
misery and destroys their moral and physical health." 

A socialist temperance lodge in Arboga recently 



Tlll^ GOTllKNBURG SYSTEM 83 

issued an appeal to workmen to keep away from the 
drinkshop. It was posted on the billboards of the 
town but was torn down by the city treasurer (signifi- 
cant fact!) Again it was put up; again torn down. 
Here is a part of this dangerous document : 

**Workmen, Comrades. 

"Avoid the drink-shop. Don't visit these miserable 
nests which are set up to pull you dowm, to keep you 
in ignorance and to rob you of your hard earnings. 
Don't be misled by the enticements of the brew^er and 
the saloon-keeper. Thousands upon thousands are 
pining behind Swedish prison walls because of drink, 
thousands upon thousands of homes are laid w^aste be- 
cause of the same drink and thousands and thousands 
of hungry children cry themselves to sleep because of 
the ravages of this terrible evil. 

*'But in their elegant palaces beer and brandy 
kings roll in luxury at the cost of hungry, weeping 
women and children. 

Comrades, give nothing to your enemies ! 
Comrades, shun the saloon !'' 

Some one w^ill perhaps object that a large part of 
the moneys taken from the poor returns to them in the 
form of relief and of free institutional arrangments of 
various sorts. The list of the donations to charities 
made by the Hamar Samlag is before me. On the face 
of it it seems a fairly satisfactory document. From the 
surplus of the business 400 kroner are given to an 
orphan asylum. 500 kroner to clothing poor children, 
300 to poor relief. 300 to a hospital, 300 to a workrnan's 



84 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

academy, 500 to a cooking school, and so on down a 
quarter of a column of a newspaper, — Sunday schools 
and mission halls not being forgotten, either, in the 
kindly distribution/^^ 

The particular vice of the vicious circle which 
such reports represent seems to one person at least to 
be hypocrisy. The fines for drunkenness in Stock- 
holm are estimated by the editor of ''Verdandisten'* to 
have amounted in 1908 to something like 222,000 kron- 
er. Most of this comes from the poorest of the poor. 
The amount granted this year by the Swedish parlia- 
ment to temperance societies and various forms of tem- 
perance work, the cure of drunkards and the like, was 
201,750 kroner — 20,000 kroner less. And this is for all 
Sweden while the above mentioned fine money came 
from Stockholm alone. 

Mn Jonsson of Hokhult.in his motion for local option 
in the Riksdag mentioned the fact that there are today 
more than 50,000 drunkards in Sweden. Such is one 
fruit of the Gothenburg System. For the cure of these 
alcohol-sick the Riksdag of 1909 set apart 50,500 kron- 



(O It has been recently remarked that this particular 
Samlag refused to make a grant to the Orje Sanatorium for 
the Cure of Alcoholists but in 1908 gave 1109 kroner and in 
1909, 255 more to a Festivity Hall in Hamar and gave re- 
bates on liquors sold to a gathering of singing clubs at Nes 
to such a point that these liquors were actually delivered 
below cost! The management defended itself against the 
complaint of the government auditor by explaining that these 
reductions were made for business reasons. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 85 

er — 2^ cents apiece. But four times as much — 222,0000 
kroner — were according to Mr. Tornfelt's estimate 
mulcted from the alcohol-sick of Stockholm alone. 

The shamhumanitarianism of Gothenburgism could 
have no more vivid illustration. Whatever little re- 
lief the poor get is but a percentage from the pickings 
of their pockets. If they keep hold of their saloon 
money they will need little charity and any such help 
would then be genuine. 

One of the most striking reports from the great 
local option war in Ohio in 1909 is that after prohibi- 
tion it is almost impossible to get washerwomen in 
''dry" towns. Wives of drinking men are now support- 
ed as they should be. Similar stories came from Kan- 
sas when the joints w^ere closed. The shoe dealers 
never sold so many womens' and childrens' shoes. If 
the Gothenburg System had been set up in these places 
the women would still be washing, the shoes would be 
in the show windows, and the various denominational 
and fraternal societies would be rivals for the profits 
of the common w^ealth from common woe which the 
System brings. For this is a thing which is too often 
forgotten. Scandinavia is a homogeneous land racially 
and religiously. It is a land too without political in- 
trigue and graft. The immense sums to be divided 
among asylums and hospitals and institutions of diff- 
ering folks and faiths in America would be a fruitful* 
source of discord and logrolling. The right of dis- 
tribution would be a basis for machine action with 



86 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

hardly a parallel in our present system/^^ The only 
wisdom is to keep the money in the pockets of those 
who earn it/^) 



(2) "It gives influence and prestige to sit on the direc- 
torate of the Samlag and to distribute moneys to hungry in- 
stitutions." Scharffenberg's Kampen mod Alkoholen i Norge, 
p. 7. 

(3) The following incident will ilustrate the short sight- 
edness of the admirers of the Samlag charity system: 

In a fight against the Samlag in a small Norwegian 
town one of the prohibitionists asked an old woman if she 
would not vote against the drink-shop. No, she wouldn't; 
she earned a kroner every Saturday washing for the Samlag. 

"But haven't you a husband who earns something?" 

"Yes he earns 14 kroner a week in a saw-mill." 

"But that's surely enough for you?" 

"For the land's sake, I don't get anything of that. He 
drinks his whole pay up at the Samlag." — Menneskevennen. 
Sept. 6, 07. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

Violation of Law Under the System. 

'*And Trinculo is reeling ripe. Where should they 
find this grand liquor that hath gilded them?" 

— The Tempest. 

By means of the prohibitory law Americans get 
rid of legal sale. There often remains however a 
troublesome though exaggerated illicit sale which 
time, patience, and additional federal legislation will 
reduce to a minimum. But the Gothenburg System 
while retaining the legal sale, and that is its essential 
evil, gives no especial guarantee against illegal sale. Its 
managers violate the principles at least of the System 
by shipping drink into no-license territories. They 
undoubtedly often sell to bootleggers their stock in 
trade. 

We have referred elsewhere to Egersund, the 
town nine-tenths of whose Samlag's sale is in sur- 
rounding ''dry" territory. The city government and 
the directorate of this Samlag are one and the same 
persons. When, therefore, they were in their capacity 
of city fathers appealed to by individuals and societies 
in prohibition Stavanger not to send drink into that 
city they naturally enough did not see their way clear 
to intervene. Later, however, it was agreed not to 
ship drink to a place if the authorities of that place 



88 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

requested them to refrain. But they have not kept 
their promise. Drink has been sent to neighboring 
places and then trans-shipped to ''dry'' towns. It has 
also been sent to false addresses. 

The editor of the ''Egersund Post" is chairman of 
the Samlag. Consul Puntervold, a shareholder, sent 
to the paper criticisms of the Samlag's management. 
He was denied access to its columns. He stated 
therefore on a flier which he sent about the place that 
the management paid to the city exorbitant rents for 
its building, in this way giving the city money which 
ought to have gone to the Norwegian state. ^'^ 

It has further paid excessive salaries — five times 
as much to its auditor as the auditor of the commune 
is paid, — extra pay to a director ''for making addresses 
and writing articles in defense of the Samlag,'' etc. 

Abuses in little Egersund ! What would there not 
be in Boston or New York? 

On the North Cape a drink shop affiliated with the 
System has been opened for those philistine tourists 
who cannot enjoy the glory of the midnight sun 
without wine. It was not expected that this shop 
would sell to fishermen and country folk round about. 



(i) Mr. Oskar Petersson intimates that similar tricks are 
played in Sweden. In a large city on the west coast the 
Bolag threatened to suspend seUing altogether because the 
city interfered with its building plans. Up to that time it 
had hired its selling place from the city at an unreasonably 
high rate and the city authorities did not wish to lose this 
golden Qgg. — Svenska Rusdryckslagstiftningen, p. 58. 



THE GOTffENBURG SYSTEM 89 

The law indeed allows this but the alleged moral and 
restraining- infliiense of the System ought to have 
been a guarantee against it. 'T notice," writes an 
indignant correspondent, "boat after boat coming 
from Gjaesvaer and other adjacent fishing villages to 
buy w^ine and recall with a shudder the conditions in 
which they return home. Many a poor fisherman has 
spent 100 kroner there. Nowhere in Norw^ay are the 
regulations of the law more violated. They sell night 
and day; Sunday and holiday.'' (Correspondence in 
Menneskevennen, 5, June, 1908.) 

The ''Karlstad Tidning'' (June, 1909) writes of 
the Bolag shops of that city : ''All our drink-selling 
places without exception act in the most irresponsible 
w^ay towards confirmed drunkards. None know better 
who have reached this stage of the vice than the per- 
sonnel of these places. Yet they rarely make any at- 
tempt to prevent drunkards from getting drunk. 'He 
is a good customer. We can't very well refuse such 
a one what he asks for. It is the morality of the busi- 
ness to treat purchasers well.' " 

At a recent meeting of the municipal authorities of 
the Swedish town of Saeter a protest was issued 
against the phrase used by the management of the 
local Gothenburg System Company to the effect that 
their activity was "in the interest of morality." As 
indicating how far from the truth this was, the fact 
w^as adduced that at times when the police had ordered 
the shutting up of the Company drink-shop they had 
actually kept it open. By a large majority the follow- 



90 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

ing statement was adopted: "Under no circumstances 
can the traffic in intoxicants be spoken of as being 
carried on in the interests of morality. Least of all can 
this claim be justified in the case of the institution in 
Saeter where it violates the laws laid down by the 
city government. We make as the responsible leaders 
of the city, a distinct protest against this contention 
as to the moral character of the Company drink-shop." 

One would suppose that in Gothenburg, the home 
of the System, whither the already convinced go from 
England and America to study its w^orking and whence 
they return with such expectedly rosy reports, there 
would be no law breaking on the part of the manage- 
ment. Not so! 

An observer examining the situation here writes 
to the "National Kuriren" : 

*'One can see the drink-shop a long way off. 
Outside stands a line of people, among them many 
children, waiting their turn. A large number of them 
are semi-intoxicated. All shiver in the cold and some 
swear because things do not move more quickly. A 
policeman from time to time straightens out the line 
of drunk and sober. After an interval each has made 
his purchases. Sober and drunk leave the place to- 
gether with the bottle or bottles which they have 
bought. 

"But! — drunken people and minors are according 
to the law not allowed to purchase drink. This is ex- 
pressly forbidden by the royal regulations of the 9th 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 91 

of June, 1905. Nevertheless it is done in broad day- 
light and as a matter of course. 

"Again. Just opposite a third-class saloon of the 
Gothenburg System a crowd of people have gathered. 
They are watching a man beastly drunk lying in the 
gutter outside. He has just been thrown out by the 
drink seller after having sat the whole day spending 
the money he had saved in the house of correction at 
Svartsjo, where he had broken stone for months be- 
cause the drink sold him by our moral institution had 
been too much for him. 

"But! — the royal regulations say definitely in the 
31st paragraph: *'A drunken person may not be 
turned out of a drinkshop where he has been drinking 
or left without supervision." 

"And once again. Your correspondent happened 
recently into a suburban inn. There, too, he noticed 
violations of law. The royal regulations, paragraph 6, 
say: 'Innkeepers are not allowed to serve beer unless 
at the same time food is ordered." 

"But ! — the clause was being scandalously violated. 
A large number of people were in the dining room 
drinking. No food was to be seen. Intoxicated per- 
sons entered and were served drink. People not in- 
toxicated were plied with drink until they became so. 
The noisy ones were unceremoniously ejected as the 
evening wore on. Violation of this type is so common 
that it is a question if people generally realize that it 
is a breach of law. 

"And still again. Passing another place we noticed 



92 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

a group of loafers who were putting together money 
enough to purchase another liter of spirits after they 
had finished together one bottle. One of the party 
took the money and went into the Company Shop to 
buy a bottle the contents of which he would then sell 
to his cronies. 

"But! — the law forbids all such subselling. Yet 
as in the other case such violations of law are of daily, 
rather hourly occurence throughout the 3^ear.'' 

Mr. Oskar Petersson, who has made a searching 
critique of the System, says that in the yearly reports 
of the Swedish Finance Department there are many 
severe references to the actions of a large number of 
Companies. These strictures especiall}^ relate to un- 
justifiable incomes which have come to various indi- 
viduals and institutions from the Company and 
secondly, to abuses in the system of letting out rights 
of retailing drink to affiliated drink-shops. 

Many Bolags have attempted to increase their in- 
come by sending out agents to push the trade (liter- 
ally so! "For uppdrivande af affaren!") and by re- 
ducing prices before church holidays as Easter and 
Christmas. 

These attempts to stimulate trade have been made 
sometimes for the sake of the legitimate dividings be- 
tw^een state and charitable institutions, sometimes to 
increase the incomes of directors and administrators. 
A certain per cent of the income has gone to different 
servants of the company as additional pay. 

Other ways of milking the Company have been, — 



TiiR Gc)riii{\r>URG systi^:m 93 

a. Charging it unreasonable rents and pocketing the 
increased charge; b. taking rebates which really be- 
longed to the Company ; c. buying spirits from the dis- 
tillers on credit and charging the Company commis- 
sions for advancing money, etc. 

The system of subletting has opened the way for 
great abuses. Mr. Petersson mentions one Company 
which rented out all its licenses, not operating a single 
one itself! Some of these sub-sellers of the System 
have received their right to sell that they may deal in 
finer grades of liquors but as a matter of fact sell the 
wretchedest kinds of cognac. 

He also gives a vivid picture of how the law is 
violated as to closing at ten o'clock at night in an 
affiliated restaurant of the better sort under the Goth- 
enburg System. The police telephone that they are 
coming for inspection and when they arrive two hours 
after closing time lights are all put out and the guests 
sit still in darkness. 

When the police commissioners asked w^hy the 
restaurants at Hasselbacken — the well-known Stock- 
holm resort — were not closed at the time of evening 
service on Sunday as the law requires, one of the 
restaurateurs bluntly said: ''That would never do. 
There would certainly be a riot.'' And to such law- 
breakers the Gothenburg System sublets the right of 
drink-sellino^/^^ 



(O O. Petersson ''Svenska rusdryckslagstiftningen och 
Goteborgs Systemet/' pp. 30-31 and 40-43. 



94 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

When Caligula was reproached by Antonia, his 
grandmother, for some bad deed, he retorted with 
astonished eyes, ''Have you forgotten that all things 
are allowed me?" This is the attitude of Pabst and 
Schlitz and Blatz and Seipp and Busch — the beer 
uitlanders. The brewer is the chief hindrance to the 
enforcement of liquor laws in the United States. 

The temper of this personage is much the same in 
Scandinavia. The System having nothing to do with 
the manufacture is powerless to control him, which is 
the capital reason why its adoption in the United 
States would be so futile a move. His bootlegging 
agents when in trouble are reasonably secure of having 
their fines paid for them by some one higher up. Beer 
is packed and shipped like mineral waters for the con- 
venience of violators. ''During the field manoevres 
at Jederen last week" so runs a clipping before me, 
"there were many complaints of traders bringing beer 
to sell to soldiers and sight-seers. One man is said to 
have disposed of a hundred cases of beer in this way. 
Where were the police?" 

So even if the Samlag were really a sort of air- 
tight stove which kept the fire strictly confined it 
would be of little protection to "Mother Norway." 
Another fire burns merrily all the while out of sight in 
the plaster. Here is an illustration of the lawlessness 
of Norwegian brewerdom. The keeper of the skyds- 
station in Mysen in Smaalene trading in drink con- 
trary to the law, as the brewers who supplied him well 
knew, returned in nine months, 1904-05, to various 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 95 

breweries 230 cases of empty bottles. There were 
many tragic consequences of this blind tiger's activity. 
Thus one evening a young man stopped at the station 
on his way to Christiania where he was to be married. 
He had 500 kroner on him. He began drinking, lost 
his money at cards, and on reaching Christiania at- 
tempted in his desperation to shoot both his sweetheart 
and himself. He was punished, but the blind pig and 
the brewer swineherds of Christiania remained un- 
touched. 

It is not necessary to multiply instances. We will 
give but two more, one from the Swedish capital and 
one from the Norwegian. 

''Social-Demokraten'' of Stockholm some time 
since described a blind pig in that city whose sales are 
constantly increasing. The proprietor who is nomi- 
nally a cigar-dealer buys brandy en gros and bottles it 
in half liter flasks which he sells at a considerable 
profit. ''Just ask for a white cigar and you will get 
your bottle.'' The business is quite lively perhaps 
three hundred bottles a week being sold. 

"Afton-Posten" oi Christiania says: "In spite of 
all measures it has been impossible to stop the sale of 
furniture polish for drink to the lazzaroni of the city. 
It is bought from masked brandy shops operating as 
shellac stores. Bottles containing spirits with a little 
coloring matter to give the appearance of shellac and a 
slight tincture of the latter to enable the seller to 
truthfully excuse himself to the police, constitute the 
stock in trade of these ingenious law-breakers. 



96 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Women, too. engage in the business. One of these 
female 'gaukerinde' has profited so largely by this 
lucrative trade that she is now able to live a care- 
free existence in America.'' 

The nullification of liquor laws under whatsoever 
system it occurs raises the whole drink question to a 
level of the highest constitutional importance. Is thelaw 
to be supreme? Is majority rule to be the norm of 
legislation? Are statutes to be repealed or altered at 
the will of those w^ho wish to break them? Open the 
dikes at one point and we will soon be submerged at 
every point. 

The Sunday closing law of St. Louis was for years 
nullified by the brewers. ''Repeal it therefore/' said 
President Eliot in his contribution to the Report of the 
Committee of Fifty. A wiser and firmer man, Gov. 
Folk, efifected its rigid enforcement. Darwin speaks 
in one of his letters of the law against sending sweeps 
up chimneys. "It makes one shudder," said he, ''to 
fancy one of one's own children at seven years being 
forced up a chimney, to say nothing of the consequent 
loathsome disease and ulcerated limbs and utter moral 
degradation. Yet the brutal Shropshire squires are as 
hard as stones to move. The Act out of London 
seems most commonly violated." 

Some would have gasped "You can't enforce it; 
be satisfied with regulations. Let it apply only to the 
smallest chimneys and the most dangerous." But 
Darwin's clear-headed sister, Susan, prototype of so 
many clear-headed American temperance w^omen, or- 



THK GOTHET^nJURG SYSTEM 97 

ganized a society and prosecuted the offenders. And 
this is the only thing to be done under all such cir- 
cumstances. 

If the management of the Gothenburg System 
were really interested in temperance, as is supposed by 
many, they would not only obey all regulations for 
preventing drunkenness but would of their own initi- 
ative do many things w^hich would materially help on 
the fight against alcoholism. They could make of their 
sales rooms for bottled goods (Minut-Handel) a per- 
manent anti-alcohol exhibition like the traveling ones 
of Switzerland. The thousand and one weighty facts 
which the alcohol research has given us could be 
brought to the knowledge of precisely that constitu- 
ency which needs most to know them. On the walls 
of the drinking places quotations from Forel and Krae- 
pelin and Legrain would dissuade drinkers from slow 
suicide. On the labels of bottles medico-hygienic 
matter in regard to alcohol of the first importance could 
be printed. Wrapping paper w^ould be a useful ve- 
hicle of statistical and physiological information — and 
so on. 

But the System if it will not dissuade its cus- 
tomers from suicide does not propose to commit sui- 
cide itself. The enlightenment of the public as to 
alcohol is the last thing it wishes. 

Finally. Of all the terrible toxic essences ab- 
sinthe is without doubt the most to be feared. Bel- 
gium and Switzerland — thoroughly alcoholized lands 
— prohibit its sale. Holland is planning to do the same. 



98 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

The best elements in France lead by the Academy of 
Medicine are in arms against it. One would have ex- 
pected that the Gothenburg System would have long 
since taken the moderate step of absinthe prohibition. 
But no. It has no scruples in dealing in this absolutely 
lethal poison. 

To be sure the System has lowered the alcoholic 
strength of "Company nectar'' (i. e. potato brandy) 
from 46 per cent to 35 per cent and plumes itself on its 
moral self-restraint. But 13 per cent of the yeast 
plant's excrement in a solution is enough to kill the 
yeast-plant. Nearly three times that strength is what 
the Company allows for the sensitive cells of the human 
brain. 

To expect such an institution to look after the 
interests of temperance would indeed be as the Nor- 
wegian proverb has it ''setting the ram to guard the 
oat-sack." 



CHAPTER IX. 
A Dam of Ice and the Breakwater of Granite. 

**It is not wise men who build dams of ice in the spring." 
— Swedish proverb. 

In Norway the first movement after the passage 
of the local option law of 1894 was towards closing the 
drink-shops. Twenty-seven cities voted dry out of 
fifty-one. Then followed a slight reaction. Seven 
Samlags were reinstated and only two shut down. 
Rowntree and Sherwell made much of this lapse. 

But the next stadium has been distinctly prohibi- 
tionist again. It is as if the Norwegian electorate real- 
ised that after all its first intuitions were the right 
ones. There are now thirty-six dry cities against 
twenty-seven w^et, the rural districts at large being 
under prohibition. In the local option contests of 1907, 
out of 13 wet cities contested the temperance party 
won six. It is a striking fact showing how satisfied the 
people are with prohibition that in only six of the pro- 
hibition cities did the alcohol interest attempt to bring 
back the Samlag and in all of these they were defeated. 
It may be added that in the 19 local option contests of 
1907 the votes stood 21,942 dry to 16,238 wet. In 
the preceding election the same cities gave 13,641 dry 
and 19,457 wet. The result shows clearly enough 
whither the popular consciousness is turning. 



loo THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

If the Gothenburg System were the ideal thing it 
is made out to be, its agents and supporters, one would 
suppose, would hold aloof in local option con- 
tests and let the people decide the question on its 
merits without their intervention. This has not been 
the case however. The Samlag fights for its life with 
all the tenacity of any vulgar American saloon. It 
does not hesitate either to hit below the belt. In the 
last election it repeatedly tried to muzzle temperance 
workers. The eloquent Pastor Gunderson was threat- 
ened with the bishop's interdict against his speaking. 
To cow Dr. Schafifenberg, a well-known physician and 
*'Samlag stormer" holding a position in a Christiania 
hospital, suggestions of action on the part of the city 
government were bruited. 

In Frederikstad the teachers worked against the 
Samlag. Therefore they must be punished. Their re- 
quest for increase in salary, previously endorsed by 
the school committee and city authorities, was when 
the result of the local option vote became known, 
thrown out without ceremony. In Honefos where the 
workingmen fought the Samlag they too were pun- 
ished. How? By denying free school material to their 
boys and girls. Such is the spirit and temper of the 
Norwegian System in practise, whatever it may be on 
paper. 

Facts are continually cropping up which explain 
this envenomed attitude. It has been recently discov- 
ered for example that the largest stock-holders in the 
Holen Samlag are the well-known Christiania whole- 



THK (iOrilKXliURCi SYSTEM lor 

sale liquor dealers, Damman and Baltzersen whose ad- 
vertisements blazon the sides of the daily papers of 
the metropolis. The Samlag is presumably an outlet 
for the sale of their wet goods. 

It is not surprising that the Norwegians are get- 
ting weary of the Samlag. ^^^ If you open the official 
report ^^^ of the System for 1907 you will see why. 
The statistics of drunkenness are given for the whole 
of Norway from 1866 to 1904, — an entire generation. 
Not only is there no improvement but things are act- 
ually going from bad to w^orse. Christiania's arrests 
per thousand inhabitants during the years 1866-70 
averaged 37. In 1900-04 it was 80, or more than 
double. Trondhjem's record is even more discourag- 
ing. The average number of arrests have risen in the 
same group of years from 19 to 70. Bergen is practic- 
ally stationary but all other towns together show in 

(O According to article 7 of their program the temper- 
ance party in Norway is seeking to put all outstanding private 
sale under the System. The alcohol capital opposes this. 
But the chief reason for the action of both parties does 
not lie in any anticipation of a greatly decreased sale in case 
such a re-arrangement of the retail trade take place though 
a certain decrease would perhaps result. It is because this 
step is a preliminary to prohibition. Nero wished a single 
head for the Roman people that he might cut it off at one 
blow. The temperance party seeks to concentrate the trade 
that it may more easily destroy it. It opposes the Samlag 
and aims at ultimate national prohibition. 

(2) Braendvins Samlagene og Forbruket av Braendevin, 
vin og 51 i 1907, (p. 2^ , 29.) 



I02 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

this period an average increase (from 21, to 49 arrests 
per thousand.) Even the prohibition country shares 
in this increase (from .9 to 2^ arrests per thousand) 
but the slight number of arrests compared with that 
of the cities show^s clearly enough prohibition's advan- 
tages. If the Samlags were not allowed to nullify 
the prohibition regime in the country districts and if 
the sale of beer were universally prohibited there as 
well as that of spirits, this increase in arrests would 
presumably not have to be registered. 

But how, some one will ask, does the fact of increas- 
ing drunkenness square with Norway's declining alcohol 
consumption? There are two possible explanations. 
Any recent decline ^^^ comes from the increasing num- 



(i) As a matter of fact the great decline in Norwegian 
consumption came in the early years before the Samlag was 
first established. It was a direct result of legislation pro- 
hibiting private distilling and prohibiting sale in the coun- 
try. Since 1870 when the Samlags were established decline 
in consumption has been inconsiderable. 

Mr. Andre, manager of the System in Gothenburg, calls 
attention to the fact that while Denmark's consumption is 
10.87 liters per cap., Sweden's 4.5 liters and Norway's 2.69 
liters, the arrests in Copenhagen are only 7,797 or 20 in the 
thousand of population against 11,232 in Stockholm (37 to the 
thousand), and in Christiania 17,083 or 76 per thousand. In 
other words while incomplete prohibition in the country has 
cut down the national consumption of alcohol in Norway 
and Sweden, the Samlag in the capital cities has pushed the 
drunkenness up far in excess of that of drunken Copenhagen 
with its free sale. In view of such facts one wonders how a 
"system" so little "refutation tight'' can find defenders at all. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 103 

ber of abstainers and from the greater prohibitory 
area. Where the Samlag operates drunkenness ad- 
vances. Christiania is the citadel of the system. With 
only one-tenth of the nation's population it consumes 
one-fourth of its alcohol. Director Kjaer made in 1899- 
1900 a study of the capital's drunkenness. He discov- 
ered among other things that of the male population 
over fifteen years who drank at all, 16 per cent or 
9,600, were either intemperate or pronounced drunk- 
ards. 

From Director's Kjaer's investigations ^^^ it ap- 
pears that the yearly consumption of alcohol per cap- 
ita is : 

In Christiania under the System (and with 29 
private dealers) 6^ liter of absolute alcohol. 

In the other cities of Norway (some under prohi- 
bition and some under Samlag) 4^ liters. 

In the country under prohibition (but overrun 
with Samlag brandy) 2 liters. 

In 1900 Christiania had 13,890 arrests for drunk 
and disorderly. In the entire country districts (exclud- 
ing all cities) the aggregate population of which 19 
nearly six times that of Christiania there were but 
4,663 such arrests. ^3) Not far from 18 times as many 
arrests relatively under the System as under prohi- 
bition. 



(2) Scharffenberg's Kamp mod Alkoholen i Norge, p. 
23- 

(3) Scharffenberg's Kamp mod Alkoholen i Norge, p. 24. 



I04 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Any objection that the country everywhere shows 
up better than the city begs the whole question. The 
first reason for the bad record of the city is its alco- 
holism. 

The statistics of death from alcoholism are quite 
as convincing. In 1900 the rural population was two 
and a half times that of the combined urban population 
of Norway. But the deaths from alcoholism given in 
physicians' statements between 1896 and 1900 were a 
little over one-third as many in the country as in the 
cities, 38 against 95. Here again the prohibitory re- 
gime, and that of Norway is partial and defective, 
shows up better than the System. ^^^ 

Another proof of the same superiority is found in 
Dr. Scharfifenberg's tables of Sunday arrests. In 
Copenhagen where the drink-shops are open on Sun- 
day the number of arrests exceeds that of the average 
on week-days (159 as against 140). In Christiania 
the Samlag shops are closed on Sunday and holidays. 
On the 61 such days in 1907 there were in all 576 ar- 
rests, or 9-10 per day. The average for the week days 
throughout the year was 29 per day. Sunday should 
have the largest number of arrests, being a day of un- 
employment, but prohibition keeps down the number. 
While in certain continental cities of the number of 
assaults 35 to 46 per cent are according to the same 
tables on Sunday, only 10 per cent in Christiania fall 



(i) Scharffenberg's Kamp mod Alkoholen i Norge, p 24. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 105 

on that day. considerably less than on any week day/^^ 

From Sweden we get a similar story. Mr. S. Wiesel- 
gren, the Company's spokesman, naively says: *'By 
prohibiting- the sale of spirits on Sunday the Company 
is continually bringing down the figures of drunken- 
ness for that day in Gothenburg!" 

Prohibition is not widely enough developed yet in 
Scandinavia to give us extensive comparative evidence, 
yet now and again statistics emerge in the public press 
the meaning of which is unmistakeable. Here for ex- 
ample : Grimstad was a prohibition town down to 
1900. Then it lapsed. The number of arrests the last 
year under prohibition w^as 147 ; under the first year of 
the Samlag 272 and in each year since has been higher 
than in any prohibition year in spite of the fact that 
the Hasseldalen Ship Building Company has closed its 
works and taken from the town a considerable drink- 
ing population. 

Of four little towns on the South coast of Norway, 
Lillesand and Mandal adopted prohibition ; Grimstad 
and Ekersund established Samlag shops. The com- 
bined population of the last two is slightly in excess of 
the first two, — 6,252 against 5,275. But their superi- 
ority in drunkenness is not in the least slight. The 
figures of arrest are, for the two prohibition towns, 34; 
for the Samlag towns, 341, a tenfold multiplication. 

During the local option contest in Larvik in 1908 

(2) Braendevins Samlagene o^ Forbrnket av Braend- 
vine Vin og 51 i 1907, p. 21-22. 



io6 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

the citizens of Sandefjord which had driven out the 
Samlag sent the following statement to encourage the 
people of Larvik to follow their example. It reads not 
unlike documents of local option contests in Ohio, 
1909: 

'*The undersigned with a full sense of responsi- 
bility wish to state that conditions in Sandefjord have 
decidedly improved since the Company drink-shop 
was suppressed in 1908. This is clearly indicated by 
the fact that arrests in the last year of the drink regime 
were 288; in the present year of prohibition (1906) 
only 137. 

''With regard to prohibition's effect on trade, it is 
admitted on all sides that conditions are better and 
that sales are distinctly greater than before. This is 
proved for example by the fact that the amount of im- 
ported articles sold in the last decade has increased, 
according to custom-house statistics, 300 per cent and 
that the working capital of the city banks has in the 
same time more than trebled. 

*'A large number of those who at the last election 
were most zealous defenders of the Samlag now assert 
that if the question should be brought up again they 
would be found on the side of the present prohibitory 
regime. 

(Signed). Andreas Hasle, 
L. Sorenson. 

Sandefjord.*' 

In 1907 there was a great lockout in the Borre- 
gaard cellulose industry at Sarpsborg. During the 37 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 107 

days of the lockout 1,800 men were idle. Fortunately 
when the works were closed down, the drink-shop^ ^^ 
operated by the Borregaard Company was at the same 
time shut. During these '^^y days when the operatives 
were out on the street with all their time at their dis- 
posal public order was according to the daily press 
beyond criticism. Only 14 arrests for drunkenness 
occurred. If the average had been up to that prevail- 
ing for the five preceding months when the men were 
employed and when the drink shop was open, the 
number would have been 87, or six times as many. 
This is about the measure of the superiority of prohi- 
bition over restriction and regulation. 

The statistics for prohibition Sunday in Sarpsborg 
compared with open week days (January to July, 1907) 
were as follows : 

Sundays 2 arrests, Saturdays 97 arrests, Fridays 
56 arrests, Mondays 65 arrests. Can one doubt for an 
instant but that if the drink-shop were open on Sun- 
day, the single free day of the w^eek, the arrests would 
have mounted up to at least that of the most temperate 
week and work day, Tuesday with its 41 arrests, i. e. 
have increased twentyfold?^^^ 



(i) Not indeed under Samlag control but managed on 
the same plan as to time of closing, regulations concerning 
sale to minors, the drunken, etc. It cannot be supplanted by 
a Samlag because of certain inherited privileges. The com- 
pany controlling it is one of the largest and most responsible 
in Norway. 

^2) Scharffenberg, "Afholdspolitiske Sporgsmaal," III 
p. 116. 



io8 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Every year there is a winter market lasting some 
days at Kongsvinger, a town near the Swedish 
frontier. In this town is a Samlag whose shop has up 
to the present run full blast on fair days. The writer 
noticed in the newspapers, accounts of the shameful 
state of things in the week of 1908. Ladies were afraid 
to go on the street after sundown because of the 
drunken row^dyism. A visitor narrated that his coach- 
man when driving through the crowd on the main 
street was obliged to push aside drunken men in order 
to prevent his horse running over them. In 1909 the 
drinkshop was closed in the fair season and an im- 
provement was immediately noticeable. ''The market 
of the present year showed no falling off in attendance 
as some feared/' wTites one. 'Tndeed there were ex- 
ceptionally large crowds present. Yet there was 
hardly a drunken man to be seen.'' The police report 
corroborates this fact. Here is the statistic : 

Arrests for drunkenness during fair days at 
Kongsvinger : 

1905 — 34 arrests. 

1906 — 30 arrests. 

1907 — 54 arrests. 

1908 — 33 arrests. 

1909 — 7 arrests under temporary prohibition. 

In other words prohibition has done away here 
with four-fifths of the drunkenness w^hich the Svstem 
has to its credit. 

In December last there occurred a frightful 
murder in the Vestfjorddal. It now transpires that 



tup: GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 109 

the murderer had prepared for action by purchasing 
spirits from the Kongsberg model drink-shop. When, 
to quote Keats, ''the wine had done its rosy deed,'' the 
wiseacres of the government, past-masters in the be- 
lated shutting of stable-doors as the governing class 
elsewhere, thought it well to investigate this drink- 
shop. It found that the alcohol was procured by post 
and drunk both by murderer and victim and also that 
this same shop had sent out by mail during the year the 
weight of 1,068 kilograms (about 2,100 pounds) ! 
Over a ton of poison and glass distributed through the 
mail by this regulated drink shop in violation of the 
spirit if not of the letter of the law. The department 
in Christiania now threatens to annul the license of 
the Kongsberg Samlag. 

The respect for law and the means for enforcing 
law undoubtedly stand higher in Scandinavia than in 
American cities. If such scandals occur in Norway 
worse ones would occur in New York and Chicago and 
have occurred in South Carolina under a system 
similar to that prevailing in Norway. 

In Sweden there is as yet no local-option legisla- 
tion though the lower house of the Riksdag voted for 
such in 1908. But in certain towns the authorities 
have without popular mandate refused to permit the 
model drinking places to continue their pernicious 
work. Then comes a change for the better. We get 
this for example from Elmhult in Smaland, not far 
from the place where stood the country parsonage in 



no THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

which the great botanist Linnaeus was born. The 
reporter is Dr. med. Soderberg: 

''Between Oct. i, 1904, and Nov. i, 1907, — 37 
months — there were in Elmhult not less than eight 
cases of suicide, murder and fatal accident, all of which 
were more or less directly traceable to spirits from the 
Gothenburg shop. From Nov. i, 1907, when the sale 
ceased there was in the iSyi months to the time of 
the publication of this report not a single case of 
death from this cause.'' 

When the shop is closed in one town many of the 
drinkers for the first few months send off to neighbor- 
ing places after brandy. The result is of course in- 
creased profits for the ''open shop'' town. The anti- 
prohibitionist sages of the press make much of 
this. Skeninge in Ostergotland for example has 
profited to the extent of 18,000 kroner in the past year 
by the action of its neighbor Mjolby in closing its 
drink-shop. "If this continues," remark these smug 
money-moralizers, "Skeninge's finances will soon be 
on an enviably secure basis." 

At the same time a similar case occurring in Dar- 
lecarlia is adduced. Hedemora is "in the butter" be- 
cause of the folly of Saeter whose town-council has 
closed the local drink-shop. 

But the coin has its reverse side. The "Ostergot- 
land Correspondent," no friend of temperance either, 
pictures it. It is not so pleasant as that of smiling 
Plenty with 18,000 silver kroner running out of her 
cornucopia. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM in 

*'A sigh of relief escaped all classes of society 
when the last market man packed into the train. For 
this time the crowd has been both mixed and decidedly 
unpleasant. For example a woman was seen reso- 
lutely hitting a man on his skull with a bottle so that 
the blood spurted in all directions. The fellow was 
forced to jump and run. People thought he had tried 
to commit suicide. Meanwhile in the drink-shop the 
carryings-on baffled description. A circus employe in- 
sulted the wife of the man who ran the place and then 
choked 'mine host' until he was blue-black in the face. 
Everybody says that drunkenness, rowdiness, and 
roughness took during this fair week dimensions ex- 
ceeding those in any one's memory, at least for de- 
cades. There was no lack of drink on all sides/' 

And how has it gone in prohibition Saeter? 
^'Though the temperance party is in the minority in the 
town council," writes a correspondent, ''yet none of 
the opposite party will propose a return to the Sys- 
tem. The general opinion is that the community is 
better ofif without the Gothenburg shop. Formerly it 
was at times dangerous to pass the streets because of 
drunken men. In the past year I have not seen ten 
intoxicated in the town. A customer of the shop who 
had been in the local jail nearly two hundred times 
before prohibition is now a sober man. Many similar 
cases can be instanced. Before prohibition one heard 
of purchasers of drink hanging themselves, shooting 
themselves, freezing to death. Now there is nothing 
of the sort. The stream of tramps has dried up en- 



112 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

tirely. They go direct now between Falun and Hede- 
mora past Skedvi. Crime decreases and the jail is 
rarely used/' 

"There is only one thing certain in life/' said 
Stevenson, ''and that is failure/' But failure is a rela- 
tive term. Stevenson's ''failure" was indeed worthy 
of the laurel leaf. The "failure of prohibition" is a tri- 
umph of the first magnitude besides the best successes 
of the Gothenburg System. At least that is the honest 
opinion of one who has lived many years under each 
system. 

From an absolute point of view a law may be said 
to have "failed" because it is violated when from a 
practical point of view it is wholly satisfactory. And 
after all if it were not violated there would have been 
no reason for putting it on the statute books. The 
King of Korea ordered with an optimism which 
smacked of opera boufife the immediate abolition of 
national vices. The impatient critic of prohibition is 
just as unreasonable. It takes much time for a vice 
to disappear which is rooted as deeply in the past as 
alcoholism is. To a level-headed observer its relative 
disappearance in northern New England must be a 
veritable marvel. It is not long as a student of history 
reckons time since John Boyle was given a license to 
sell rum on condition that his place be set up near the 
Second church of Boston for the parishoners' con- 
venience or since Dr. Strong, pastor of the First 
church, Hartford, himself ran a distillery. This 
temper prevailed throughout New England. A study 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 113 

of the records of the little New Hampshire mountain 
town in which the writer lives was made recently. The 
pre-prohibition period gave a dreadful picture. More 
than half of the purchases at the village store were for 
New England rum. Houses were in disrepair and un- 
painted ; farms were mortgaged and the women sup- 
ported the families. But under prohibition in 25 sum- 
mers the wTiter recalls seeing but one intoxicated 
person. 

Five years ago the state prohibition law gave place 
to a less satisfactory local prohibition law. Arrests 
for drunkenness in the state have as a consequence 
jumped 500 per cent. 

Under the Gothenburg System much of the free 
alcoholism of early New^ England is still to be seen. 
People continue ''potent in potting.'' A funeral is still 
called ''a gravol," '*a grave beer'' and a baptism '*a bar- 
sol," "a child's beer" as in the earlier days the dedica- 
tion of a church in England w^as called a ''church-ale." 
One of the speakers in the Stockholm temperance con- 
gress of 1902 told of a church dedication in Norway 
for which 360 bottles of w^ine and beer were purchased. 
By evening all were empty. Some of the participants 
naturally were staggering w^hen they went home. Mr. 
Isene mentions another church dedication in 1904 at 
which tw^enty different toasts were drunk. ^^^ The 
Sw^edish Bishop Rhode complains, and it takes much 
to make a bishop complain about drinking here as else- 



(i) Menneskevennen, 3 March, og. 



114 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

where, that the people in a certain region (around 
Frillesas) ''use at weddings, funerals, and on all festi- 
val occasions altogether too much hard drink. On 
market days, too, and at auctions they get drunk with 
their endless consumption of brandy. This is true, too, 
of all church festival times, — Easter, Christmas, Pente- 
cost and the like.'' ''It is horrible,'' he continues, "to 
see how this spirit-drinking lays waste one home 
after another. The dreadful consequences of alcohol 
poisoning hang over the whole nation. Our people 
are being ruined in body and soul. It breaks down 
all their defences against inner and outer dangers." ^^^ 

Confirmation time when the young are received 
into the state church is marked with much social alco- 
holism. At a great dinner of the northern schools in 
Christiania in 1905 six hundred bottles of beer and 
brandy and fifteen hundred of caloric punch were 
served ! Investigations in the public schools of Stock- 
holm have brought to light the fact that not less than 
70 per cent of the children over twelve years are accus- 
tomed to drink beer in their homes. At festal gather- 
ings for "budeier" or dairy girls, who look after the 
cows in the high mountains in the summer time, spirits 



(2) In his last book Ossian Nilsson says: "Alcoholism 
is a marked trait of the whole Swedish people. It takes its 
victims from all classes, high and low, learned and ignorant, 
poor and rich. It is the real shadow of barbarism which 
threatens to stifle our civilization." 



TlllC (lOTllENBURG SYSTEM 115 

arc dealt out as a matter of course. And so it goes 
on all occasions ! 

Here is a picture of what Anacreon called "Scyth- 
ian topeing" from the west of Norway. Such rioting 
is of course not common but it is unheard of at least 
in American prohibition districts. The clipping is cut 
from "Sondfjord's Avis/' a west country paper, (Aug. 
1907.) 

"On the farm where the marriage took place they 
let loose the horses in the cultivated fields and mead- 
ows. One sensible man shut the cellar where the beer 
was to prevent further excesses. The door was pried 
up and lifted off its hinges and thrown down a hill. 
The beer-kegs were rolled after it when they had been 
emptied (not on the ground). The host's supplies of 
salt meat were grabbed as if by pirates. In one beer 
barrel the contents of which seemed too thin for the 
doughty drinkers flour was mixed and the resulting 
paste cast about the walls and ceilings. The conduct 
of the guests has made the host nearly crazy." 



CHAPTER X. 
"Ended, Not Mended." 

The boldest thoughts of the present are the cool reason 
of the future. — Maeterlinck. 

One of the early popes, so the story goes, put out 
a great fire, (the Incendio del Borgo,) by making the 
sign of the cross. Something of the same sort the 
advocates of Gothenburgism attempt to do with the 
dreadful alcoholist conflagration. They try to exorcise 
it with pretty devices, they use incantatory phrases 
such as ''disinterested sale,'' or ''pure liquors." With 
water they will have nothing to do. preferring 
to throw alcohol ( in strictly limited quantities) on the 
flames. But nothing avails. The fire still rages. 

And wall so long as alcohol is sold. This is the 
point on which the System of necessity goes to pieces. 
Modern investigation has made any compromise im- 
possible. Alcohol in the smallest quantities is a dan- 
gerous protoplasmic poison. The best regulated shop 
w^hich can be imagined will still be a place for the 
sale of epilepsy, pneumonia, cirrhosis, fatty degenera- 
tions, and numberless other diseases. Dr. Brou- 
ardel's dictum, "The public house is the purveyor of 
tuberculosis," is as true of the drink-shops of Stock- 
holm as of those of Paris. Indeed the more orderly 
and better regulated the shop the more dangerous. 
Dr. Baer in his chapter on drunkenness in "Die Deut- 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 117 

sche Klinik am Eingang des Zwanzigstes Jahrhundert" 
says truly that not poverty nor climate but imitation 
leads to drinking. If the drinking-place is repulsive 
normal men and especially women are not likely to 
enter it. If it is made cosy and refined there is danger 
that they will and that they in turn will be imitated 
by others. 

The Gothenburg System institutionalises drink- 
ing and the drink trade. It has its analogues 
in the institutionalising of gambling by the Ger- 
man state lotteries, in state regulated prostitu- 
tion and the like. Such a course gives per- 
manancy to the vice. It assures us future genera- 
tions of alcohol-sick for, as Napoleon shrewdly said, 
''Institutions fix the destiny of individuals rather than 
individuals of institutions." The Gothenburg System 
is an institution for a nation of drinkers. But this is 
what the /\merican people must not be. 

The Gothenburg System has not broken the power 
of the alcohol capital^^^ and here lies for Americans 



(i) There are places in Sweden where it would be dif- 
ficult to find among the official and governing class a single 
person who is not interested in some brewery. Ministers of 
state and provincial governors make no bones of leading 
meetings of brewery directors. Men of science are induced 
to enter the lists for the mighty beer interest. A well paid 
staff of publicists trumpet unceasingly the harmlessness and 
even value of this drink. In fifty years the flood of beer has 
risen four-fold from 7 liters a head in 1861 to 29 liters in 1905. 
O. Petersson "Sv. Rusdryckslagstiftningen och Goteborgs- 
Systemet," p. 71. 



ii8 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

the crux of the practical problem. The brewers and 
distillers find the System a reasonably satisfactory and 
wholly secure outlet for their products, though they 
would undoubtedly prefer ''the Tartarean drench" of 
the unrestricted sale prevailing in England. They do 
not fight the System, however; they fight prohibi- 
tion. ^^^ The newspapers are their willing servitors 
and those of the Norwegian Right, for instance, fight 
their battles with a bitterness and unscrupulousness 
which equals if not surpasses anything the writer 
knows of. 

The recent incident of the wine treaties is an 
illustration. The great brandy distillers of Bordeaux 
and Cognac working through the French government 
have forced in turn upon the three Scandinavian 
states commercial agreements reducing the tariffs on 
wines and brandies. The listing of Scandinavian 
state loans on the Paris bourse was refused until these 



(O Now and again the underground workings of the 
brewers come to light. Here is an example. O. W. Fast- 
ing, engineer and professor in the technical school in Bergen, 
and well known as a speaker and writer asked permission 
from the authorities to leave his post in order to make stud- 
ies on the temperance question in Norway. The request was 
granted. He started on a lecture tour in which he praised all 
"true temperance" work but deprecated the movement toward 
prohibition. After a little it was discovered that he was 
highly paid by the Brewers' Association for services rendered. 
Worse than that it also appeared that he had had part in il- 
legal drink-selling in Bergen. The incidents of the anti-al- 
cohol movement are essentially the same in all countries. 

Scharffenberg, "Kampen mod Alkoholen i Norge" p. 15. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 119 

concessions were granted to French alcohol producers. 
But this was not all. Secret clauses (divulged, how- 
ever, in Norway) were introduced into the treaties the 
purpose of which was to put a period for all time to 
the promising prohibition movement in the Scandi- 
navian peninsula. The Republique, champion of 
European freedom, at the behest of the alcohol capital 
interferes in the internal affairs of three smaller na- 
tions and attempts to strangle a movement of moral 
emancipation. 

For this national humiliation certain elements in 
Norway were in all probability responsible as well. 
There can be little doubt that the alcohol capital in the 
North cooperated with that of France if it did not 
instigate the whole proceeding. The Christiania new^s- 
papers prepared the way for the coup by bullying and 
threatening the temperance party and by frightening 
the public with the terror of an additional one-half per 
cent on an hypothek loan of 25 million kroner w^hich 
subscription in London rather than in Paris would 
entail. Their tactics were successful. ^^^ 

Of course, the Gothenburg System was not re- 
sponsible for this.* But it has not made impossible such 
interference in legislation by the alcohol capital. It 
has not emancipated the press from its alcohol servi- 
tude. Further, the moral sympathy of its directors 



(2) Astonishing as it may seem the temperance party in 
the Storthing were cowed into accepting the bitter treaty. 
Only the twelve socialist members stood out for Norwegian 
independence and the cause of morality. All honor to them I 



I20 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

has been, if there has been no active co-operation in 
this crisis, with the militant alcohol interests. 

Finland has had its Gothenburg System as well as 
Norway and Sweden. But Finland by the nearly 
unanimous vote of its legislature repudiated it in favor 
of a drastic national prohibitory law\ Such action after 
many years of the System is no recommendation in its 
favor. In Norway and Sweden the temperance party is 
committed to the same policy. In Sweden, to be sure, 
the conservative upper house of the Rikstag threw out 
legislation passed by the low^er house which provided 
for local option terminating in national prohibition in 
20 years. But this is merely a preliminary skirmish. 
Iceland and the Faroes in reforming their excise sys- 
tem passed by the Gothenburg plan and adopted pro- 
hibition. Most significant of all is it that the national 
commission appointed by the Danish Rikstag to draft 
the whole matter of new alcohol legislation for Den- 
mark should take up an attitude of cold neutrality 
towards the Gothenburg System, laying the emphasis 
for reform on local option. All over Scandinavia, in 
fact, they are preparing to disprove Montesquieu's say- 
ing that ''Northerners cannot get along without 
spirits." 

And yet there are good folk in America who 
would have us take up with this thread-bare, cast-ofif 
institution. Standardized opinion in our richer Eastern 
universities generally favors it. Certain clerics among 
them the rector of St. Paul at Three Taverns and the 
clergy of the Church of St. George and the Flagon are 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 121 

enthusiasts for it. New York club men who have 
\nsited the fjords also beHeve it to be "the best solution 
of the problem'' as do various delightful Boston ladies 
who have made their studies of the alcohol question in 
the cathedrals and picture galleries of Europe. Then 
there are the representatives of the alcohol Kismet, 
fatalists of the saloon, people that protest that because 
we always have had drink-shops we must always have 
them and that we should therefore have the best type 
obtainable. These are as Prof. Forel intimates, minds 
caught in contemporary modes of thinking which can- 
not save with great efifort of imagination or without 
personal experience visualise the developments of the 
future. 

Now in the first place with these dilletante re- 
formers as a storming column would there be any 
hope of obtaining the Gothenburg System against a 
powerfully intrenched alcohol capital? Not a bit. It 
would be like expecting a triumph of Icelandic arms 
over Prussian. 

These excellent people who, one is sometimes 
tempted to think, imagine themselves the wise spoken 
of in the proverb whose mission it is to correct the 
mistakes of the good, will of themselves never be able 
to foist the System upon us. The real danger is lest 
they climb to success on the shoulders of the fighting 
prohibitionists and in that way retard or sterilize an 
impending prohibition victory. When state after state 
has adopted prohibition, when federal interstate legis- 
lation has made possible its rigid enforcement, when 



122 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

the congressional representation of prohibition states 
now in the majority begins to reach forward to com- 
plete and final victory, then we are likely to hear much 
about the System. The brewers who have opposed it 
hitherto will now look upon it as the last possible 
vaccine against the ''dry" plague. Side by side with 
them will fight the mass of what Dr. Koppe^^^ calls 
"Alkoholophags/' those anti-social epicures who refuse 
to surrender for the common weal any table pleasure 
however injurious to themselves. When to these ele- 
ments are joined the numberless slow men who dislike 
the quick and thorough methods of political idealism 
the danger time will have come for the prohibition 
movement. ^^^ The Russian novelist Garschin has 
written a parable of a palm in a hot house which 
strove to reach the sun and grew passionately to that 
end. Finally it touched the top and broke through the 
glass roof only to freeze and die in the raw air outside. 

(i) In his brilliant essay ''Das Alkoholsiechtum und die 
Kurzlebikeit des inodernen ]\Ienschen-geschlechts," p. 34, an 
essay of almost sibylline power that should be solemnly pon- 
dered by all who would see the civilized races saved from 
ruin. 

(2) At the date of writing we have an example of this 
danger. By the county option law a large part of Oregon 
is cleared of drinksellers. The prohibitionists now are plan- 
ning to obtain a state law by means of the initiative. The 
Gothenburg System for Portland is offered as a counter pro- 
posal with a guarantee of ten years undisturbed existence. 
At the end of that time the brewers would hope for a return 
of private or rather brewery-mortagaged sale again. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 123 

But prohibitionists must see to it that their powerful 
social reform does not meet a similar fate in any at- 
mosphere of specious compromise. 

For we are as yet hardly able to realize how im- 
mensely weighty this great reform is. That will come 
only when a couple of generations shall have passed 
after its triumph and its full economic and hygienic 
effect shall have begun to be visible. Lecky remarked 
that the habit of gin drinking which came from the 
Netherlands with the English soldiery as leprosy from 
the East with the Crusaders was the most momentous 
fact in i8th century English history, — incomparably 
more momentous than anything in the political or 
military annals of the country. Dr. Bresler, the editor 
of the "Internationale Psychiatrisch - neurologische 
Wochenschrift" gives the movement against alcohol 
an equally significant place in contemporary history. 
In his essay "Alkohol auch in geringen Mengen 
Gift" (p. 6) he says. ''After some decades of toil- 
some investigation men of science, especially physiolo- 
gists and psychologists, have, thanks to the exact 
methods employed, come to the positive, irrefutable 
result that alcohol is under all circumstances, in small 
as well as in great quantities, a poison for the body. 
This know^ledge will have for civilization an im- 
portance equal to the discovery of micro-organisms, 
indeed an incomparably greater importance, since in 
spite of our knowledge of bacteria we stand at present 
practically powerless against them, which is not the 
case vvith alcohol poison. I do not hesitate to put this 



124 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

revolution of opinion as to alcohol on a higher plane of 
importance than that which the Reformation occupies 
in the minds of Protestants/' 

The truth of these words makes it not only unwise 
to stop at any compromise, but also impossible. The 
war on the Welt-Narkotikum has already attained a 
momentum too great to be halted at this point by any 
armistice. The idea of prohibition is in itself in- 
trinsically reasonable. Peoples' minds are beginning to 
get accustomed to it. There is a trem-endous power 
of mass suggestion in the continuous statement of a 
clear-cut, radical principle. Year after year Mr. 
Villiers made in the House of Commons his motion for 
''Total and Immediate Repeal.'' At first he was ridi- 
culed as an impossible idealist, then bitterly fought. 
At last however reluctant opponents turned to advo- 
cates and champions. The battle against license laws 
which prohibitionists have fought so unwaveringly will 
end like that against the corn-laws. Already there are 
many signs that ''the might," to use Boerne's phrase, 
"is being mobilized behind the right." The action of 
American railroads, the weight of business interests, 
the moral enthusiasm of the Christian church, the 
proofs of European scientific research, the sympathies 
of social democracy — all these are being thrown in the 
scale for prohibition. Even the politicians are be- 
ginning to line up with us. Hitherto they have been in 
America mortally afraid of offending the politico-alco- 
hol interest. They have acted for a generation as the 
mandarins of Moukden who shifted the railway for 



[^\\K (lOrill^Xia^RG SYSTEM 125 

fear lest the sleeper spikes should strike into the 
vertebrae of the underground dragon which encircles 
the city. Now they are waking up to the fact that the 
alcohol dragon is less to be feared than the resolute 
multitudes that are out after its hide. This marks the 
beginning of the end. 

A gifted student^^^ of history writing of America's 
role in the modern world has said : 

'Tn the eighteenth century the fundamental new 
beginnings the race had made on the other side of the 
Atlantic had an incalculable effect on the thought of 
Europe. When the incubus of ancient institutions, 
feudal monarchies, hereditary privileges, and a perse- 
cuting church, seemed intolerable it was perhaps 
mainly the spectacle of America that encouraged 
Europeans. "^^^ 

The great growth of American wealth and its con- 
centration in the hands of the unscrupulous and 
frivolous have put us for the time being out of the 
place of leadership. But a new opportunity is on us. 
While France is not only herself heading straight to 
the pit of absinthe, but using her politico - financial 
power to bind the Scandinavian states in the chain of 
alcoholism, while England stands helpless before an 
impassable wall, malt-lords, land-lords and "lords 
spiritous" who have thrown out with scorn the bill of 
1908, while Russia is saturated, Germany saturated, 
Belgium supersaturated, we in America stand face to 



(O Prof. J. R. Seelye, "Growth of British Policy." 



126 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

face with an opportunity which ought to put us in the 
forefront of moral civilization and with it of national 
power. In 1910 it really looks as if the people had 
the poison capital in a corner and a clutch on its 
throat. Certainly nothing would hearten the brave 
anti-alcohol party in Europe more than a complete 
triumph of their ideas in America. And that lies 
within the range of possibility. 

At this favorable conjecture prohibition would be 
far more easily obtained than any wide application of 
compromise plans such as the Gothenburg System rep- 
resents. Its advocates have but to strike at the manu- 
facture through the national congress to paralyze the 
whole business. The sale, illegal as well as legal, 
would then dry up of itself. Here are the steps : 

1st. Combined with the widest application of the 
local option principle a national control of the manu- 
facture preliminary to its extinction. This to consist 
of two features : 

a. Federal excise officials to keep accurate records 
of all shipments. If any are made to prohibitory areas, 
directly or indirectly, the brewery or distillery to lose 
its right of manufacture. 

b. Interstate use of the railroads refused to the 
manufacturers of alcoholic beverages. Each state to 
manufacture its own poison. 

This would make local option and state prohibition 
automatically self-enforcing and w^ould lead later to 

2. A national law prohibiting the manufacture and 
sale. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 127 

Lastly to make any ideal reform effective a better 
type of executive is required in our municipalities. 
The condition precedent to this is an electorate en- 
larged in one direction, purged in another. Womens* 
political emancipation will have an immediate moraliz- 
ing effect on the political life of the nation. Side by 
side with this should go a disenfranchisement of the 
criminal classes. On the European continent the gen- 
eral practice in passing judgment on a criminal is to 
fine or imprison with the temporary loss of civil rights. 
The introduction of this practice into the United 
States would give a tremendous uplift to all strivings 
for social improvement and political honesty. We 
would suggest : 

1. That all who are convicted of buying or selling 
votes lose the right of voting permanently. 

2. That all convicted of criminal offenses lose the 
suffrage temporarily — for five or eight or ten years, 
according to the gravity of the offense. 

3. That as long as licenses are given for selling 
drink, holders of such licenses should besides paying 
the usual license fees lose civil rights until the license 
lapses. This would make the seller more than ever a 
pariah and cut out his malign influence from our po- 
litical life. 

Such legislation would not be difficult to obtain in 
those states which have the initiative and referendum. 
It would not be impossible to obtain in very many 
other states. Its effect would be twofold, — first to re- 
move the entire criminal and drinkselling: class from 



128 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

political life; secondly to stiffen immensely the po- 
litical independence and to improve the moral quality 
of our local administrators. And this it is which is 
chiefly needed to make prohibition a complete success. 
By working along some such lines the American 
people will be able to light a beacon for the alcohol- 
sick nations. But to attempt to set it ablaze with the 
System would be like trying, in Walpole's words, ''to 
light a fire with a wet dish-clout.''"^ 

I am writing these concluding sentences in one of 
the high valleys of Norway with a noble landscape all 
about. It has been raining heavily for several hours, 
but the clouds have now lifted. I noticed some minutes 
ago a black spot on the green hill-side a half-mile 
away and asked a servant what it was. 

*'A man, apparently,'' came the reply. 

**What ! and lying out in this drenching rain?" 

''Yes, he came up from Lillehammer (where the 
nearest Samlag is located), stumbled off the train and 
has been flat on his face ever since." 

How many such block blotches has this particular 
Samlag cast out today, I wonder? 

I pick up a Christiania daily for relief. The first 
thing that attracts my attention is an account of a 
drunken woman's arrest. **It took two policemen to 
handle her" wrote the reporter. "She had in her arms 
a child wholly naked." 

* The rapid extension of the initiative and referendum 
will put a weapon of incomparable effectiveness into the 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 129 

hands of American anti-alcoholists. But it must be used with 
more regard to strategic considerations than in the ill-fated 
'all or nothing' Missouri campaign of 1910. 

The great difficulty of making the transition from local 
option to state prohibition in three-fourths of the states of 
the Union is the presence in each of these states of one or 
two large cities where the law against sale would probably 
be to a greater or less degree nullified. The strength of the 
drink-shop in these centres rests in the backing of the brew- 
ery which owns it and which by political and financial con- 
nections is able to protect it from the law officers. 

In view of this situation it is a question whether the at- 
tack should not be made primarily on the alcohol capital, the 
sale in the great centres being for the moment disregarded. 
County option in many states has cleared the drink-shop out 
of the country and smaller towns and has given the temper- 
ance party a hold on state legislatures. If to county option 
as to sale were coupled state prohibition of the manufacture, 
the way would be cleared for a successful treatment of the 
saloon in the cities. 

Such a plan should however be a concerted one. We 
would suggest the simultaneous year-after-year introduction 
of prohibition of manufacture laws into all the legislatures. 
Secondly the annual placing of a prohibition of manufacture 
proposal before the people of the referendum states. Thous- 
ands of conservative temperance men who would balk at the 
idea of putting Louisville or St. Louis or Baltimore or Bos- 
ton under a general prohibition law would gladly vote for the 
closing down of the manufacture in their respective states — 
especially if they knew it to be part of a concerted national 
movement to this end. The ancient ungrammatical argument, 
"prohibition don't prohibit,*' would have no cogency here for 
the federal government remorselessly crushes out small illegal 
distilling and the great brewers would never risk the confis- 
cation of their plants by violating such a law. This plan 
carried on year after year until it had generally succeeded 



I30 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

would keep the agitation at white heat. Its success in a 
half dozen states where the manufacture is largely concen- 
trated would paralyze the national drink interests. It is a 
policy, too, on which temperance radicals who think local 
option 'too local and too optional" could join with temper- 
ance conservatives who look upon state prohibition of sale 
as premature. The referendum would enable us to keep at it 
until we won. 

In view of the strong pro-prohibition decisions of the 
supreme court it is doubtful if any objection to this policy 
of prohibition by piecemeal would be raised in the courts. 
The brewers have declared with characteristic impudence 
in their official organ that they 'Vill sell beer wherever the 
profits are greater than the risks" and have boasted again 
and again that they have broken down local option laws. 
Their suppression therefore could be defended before the 
courts as a necessary law enforcement measure. It should 
not to be forgotten, either, in this connection that the modern 
alcohol investigation has deprived the brewery of its single 
possible justification as supplying a legitimate demand for 
limited use. The old 'moderation' argument is knocked in the 
head for ever. The brewery consequently stands naked and 
bare as an unmitigated nuisance. Court decisions taking this 
fact into consideration can hardly be more lenient than in the 
past. 



APPENDIX. 
Prohibition During the Swedish General Strike of 1909. 

. October i, 1909. 

The death warrant for the Gothenburg System is 
out at last. "Since the abohtion of home distilleries in 
1855/' says "Verdandisten/' ''no event in the Swedish 
temperance movement has been so important as the 
five weeks of prohibition during the general strike of 
1909." 

The French make a distinction between ''reforms" 
and "reformettes." If the Gothenburg System is not a 
positively evil thing as the wTiter believes it to be, the 
best that can be said of it is that it belongs in the latter 
category. 

But prohibition is a reform of the first magnitude, 
of the profoundest beneficence, and no more cogent evi- 
dence of the fact has ever accumulated than that which 
the weeks of the Swedish strike have given the world. 

The saloon is usually the best strike-breaker. It 
reduces the strikers' resources and discredits his 
cause with riot and disorder. It was therefore a sur- 
prise to many that the Swedish government should 
have taken the precaution to close the drink shops 
when the general strike broke out. The probable ex- 
planation lies in the fact that distinctly anarchistic 
elements smoulder in the left wing of the Swedish 



132 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

socialist party. The dynamite at Malmo, the agita- 
tion of Hinke Bergegren, above all the recent assas- 
sination of Gen. Beckmann in Kungstragarden, 
warned ''the upper classes'' that it were best for the 
time being to dispense with alcohol. 

"As long as only the women and children of 
drunkards were hammered/' remarked a laborer, 
''they shrugged their shoulders. When their own 
hides were threatened the drinkshops quickly closed." 

The results were immediate. Drunkenness dis- 
appeared as by magic. The Swedish papers read like 
a supplementary chapter in "Looking Backward." 
"It seems incredible," writes the "Karlstad Tidning" 
— "almost unreal! For eight days the jail has stood 
empty. It is as if one had moved to a Karlstad of 
later centuries when the fancies of the temperance 
party had at last realized themselves." "An intoxicat- 
ed person," says Soderhamns Tidning," "appeared 
Friday on the streets. The unusual sight occasioned 
general remark and he was stared at as if he were a 
strange animal. The man himself appeared embar- 
rassed at the general attention he received." And 
"Svenska Dagbladet," Sweden's premier newspaper, 
in the same vein under the caption, "A Strange Oc- 
currence," says: "At the Katrina (Stockholm) sta- 
tion a man was brought in drunk. He is the second 
since prohibition went into effect three weeks before." 

Dr. Ivan Bratt writing in "Dagens Nyheter" 
(neither writer nor paper are prohibitionist) says : 
"When one goes through the streets of Stockholm 



THK CiOTllENBURi; SYSTEM 133 

one would think one in another country. Our infalli- 
ble national symbols, unsteady gait and resounding 
oaths, are no longer perceived. The police have noth- 
ing to do and the court average of fifty drunks a day 
has sunk to just one! One knows oneself no longer! 
One asks, Can it go on so? These two weeks have 
brought much water to the prohibitionist mill.'' 

After two days of prohibition ''Gothenburg's 
''Handels-Tidning," the great paper of West Sweden, 
remarked : ''The most striking thing thus far has been 
the complete absence of drunkenness. The contrast in 
Jarntorget (in Gothenburg) before and after the en- 
actment of prohibition has been unmistakeable. Satur- 
day, Sunday and Monday evenings the section swarm- 
ed with people in a greater or less degree intoxicated. 
The day following one looked in vain for such. The 
police gave the same testimony. In three police dis- 
tricts not an arrest was made and in the fourth but 
one." "Goteborgs-Posten" adds, "Only ten drunks 
during fifteen days of the strike. Twenty-five a day 
is a common thing when the drinkshops are open. In 
the Haga district instead of the usual eight or ten 
only one person is in jail. The chief of police says 
that in 22 years he never experienced anything like 
this." 

"Aftonbladet" (Stockholm) : **Thanks to prohibi- 
tion only one person last night in the whole city was 
arrested. Such a thing never happened before." 
"Svenska Morgenbladet :" "Thousands are idle on 
the streets, vet not a single arrest for drunkenness was 



134 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

made yesterday." "Dagbladet :" '\Stockholmers are 
astonished to find that punch and grog play a less im- 
portant role in their life than they had supposed." 
''Dagens Nyheter:" "People sit quietly in the pool 
rooms drinking cofifee and lemonade. One can go from 
one end of the city to the other without seeing a sign 
of an intoxicated person. At Jakob (parish) police- 
station no arrests ; Maria, none ; Johannes, none ; 
Kungsholm, only one ; Katrina, one. Such model con- 
duct the police of the last named parish hardly ever 
saw. One realizes that under such a system the 
Swedish people can really be admirable and not ill- 
tempered as so often.'' 

From the provincial cities came the same story. 
''Norrkopings-Tidning" writes: ''Near the post-office 
was a solitary policeman. When we accosted him he 
seemed like one awakened out of a stupor of astonish- 
ment at the admirable conduct of people. 'That is be- 
cause they can get no alcohol. See how quiet it is. 
Usually in the evenings one constantly sees men in a 
more or less advanced stage of intoxication collected 
on the street corners, swearing and quarreling and 
fighting. Now we have nothing to do and since Tues- 
day the jail has been empty. One could wish the 
strike could go on forever. At least one can realize 
the blessings of prohibition. It ought to be perma- 
nent. The community would then be spared trouble, 
misery and poverty.' " 

''Nerikes Tidning:" ''From July 30 to August 26, 
about one month, only nine persons have been ar- 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 135 

rested in Orebro, none of tliem for drunkenness. In 
the same period 1908, 92 persons were arrested, of 
whom 80 were for drunkenness. Between the 2nd 
and 29th of July, the month preceding prohibition, 100 
arrests were made, 84 of which were for drunkenness. 
What do these figures say? They cry out 'away with 
drink.' " 

'*Eskilstuna Kuriren :" "Thanks to prohibition 
not a single arrest for drunkenness has taken place in 
the city (Eskiltuna is a steel manufacturing center.) 
The jail is empty save for two tramps who had no 
place to lodge." 

"Arboga Tidning:'' ''Only one intoxicated person 
has been seen since the strike began." ''In five weeks," 
comes the report from Hudviksvall, "only one person 
before the court for drunkenness. Usually we have 
very many every Monday morning." 

But there w^as further a sympathetic fall in ar- 
rests for other crimes.* The Solleftea police report for 



*Dr. Blocher of Basel, who was on the ground at the 
time, calls attention to this parallel decline in general crim- 
inality. The whole number of crimes registered in the Stock- 
holm police court in August 1908 (drunkenness being excluded 
from consideration) was 530; in August 1909, 268. Of thefts 
412 and 196 respectively. Increased security of property in 
spite of increased insecurity in social conditions and in spite 
of rising economic need. 

Internat. Monatschrift zur Erforschung des Alcoholis- 
mus. Dec. 1909, pp. 454-456. 

The prohibition days of the Finnish general strike in 
1905 were marked by the same absence of crime. Dr. Helenius 



136 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

August recorded not an arrest for ordinary crime, but 
three for violation of prohibition. The preceding 
month there were 42 arrests for drunkenness and 20 
for other crimes. August 26, ''National Kuriren'' re- 
ported that "the Gothenburg police court of the pre- 
ceding week had but one case to try. This was the 
minimum record in the court's history.'' Of the Stock- 
holm police court ''Svenska Morgenbladet'' remarked 
(i6th August) : ''An exceptionally short session, 
Saturday, in the police court. There were nine per- 
sons charged and the court closed in 20 minutes. The 
most of these committed their offenses before the 
strike began. The usual number of criminals dealt 
with runs up to a hundred/' 

In Norrkoping the public prosecutor received on 
the 7th of September, a pair of white gloves from the 

says of Helsingfors: "During the whole strike week 
there was but one single drunk person who had to be lodged 
in the police station. There was not a single case of theft, 
not a single fight, not a single instance of coarse conduct, 
although the whole city every night was veiled in complete 
darkness and during many nights and days there was not a 
single policeman in service. And what was more importanf, 
in spite of the restlessness and discord between the parties 
not a drop of blood was shed during the whole strike. The 
result of this experience was an almost unanimous adoption 
of a prohibition law in 1907. When the news of its passage 
came a general illumination took place throughout the 
country. In many places schools were closed, thanksgiving 
services were held in the churches and popular festivals in- 
stituted everywhere." 

Internat. Monatschrift, April, 1910, p. 106. 



THK GOTHEXBURG SYSTEM 137 

judge (a symbol of a clean court). Not a case was re- 
ported, a thing which had not happened for twenty-eight 
years. And from the newspaper of little Sigtuna we 
get this: — "It has been so calm and peaceful here since 
Swedish potato water (i. e. spirits) was put under lock 
and key that one could think Sigtuna a garden of the 
Lord." 

The temperance paper ''National Kuriren" of 
Gothenburg is wont to publish w^eekly, a column in 
which are collected the week's crimes, accidents, deaths 
and the like to the credit of the Gothenburg System 
drinkshops. It is a striking fact that during the four 
weeks of prohibition this column disappeared altogeth- 
er from its accustomed place. There was simply no 
material to fill it. 

A writer in ''Stockholms Tidning'' says : — ''My own 
conviction is that prohibition has been the keeper of 
the peace (it must be always remembered that 200,000 
angry men were out on strike in all the Swedish towns 
and cities) in a far greater degree than police and mili- 
tary. All are delighted with it especially the wives of 
workingmen. 'This is the best of all/ they say. 'Would 
that the drinkshops never opened again.' '' And in the 
same strain a reporter quoted in ''Verdandisten'' re- 
marked : — '*A wife of a day laborer said to me 'Such a 
blessed strike ! May it go on forever ! I have not been 
so happy since I was married. I aways trembled when 
my man came home lest he strike me or the children. 
Now I have no anxiety : whether he come early or late 
he is alwavs sober and the kindest man in the world.' 



138 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

That was her little temperance speech and who could 
want a better?'' 

''The animals too if they were not like the women 
without the franchise w^ould doubtless vote 'dry' with 
the women. A correspondent in *Nerikes Tidning' 
writes : — 'We get a very good impression from the 
people who come driving back from Orebro on our 
roads in the evenings nowadays. Before the strike 
they drove furiously, whipping their horses unmerci- 
fully. Now the same persons come at a reasonable 
pace without torturing their horses. What has made 
the difiference? Prohibition.'" 

Some of the good things which a longer period of 
prohibition w^ould undoubtedly bring are suggested by 
the two following notes. 

"Sundsvalls Posten" (Sep. 14) under the heading, 
"Poverty and the Great Strike*" remarks : "The guard- 
ians of the poor of this city were astonishingly little af- 
fected by the strike. Even now after its close the num- 
ber of applicants for help is considerably less than last 
year when conditions w^ere normal. It has not been so 
quiet at the relief bureau for a long time. This is chief- 
ly due to prohibition. Money has gone for food and 
clothes. Many poor families in this strike time have 
clothed their children as they were unable to do w^hen 
their men were working." 

And this, which may be merely coincidental, is 
nevertheless interesting. "The mortality in Stock- 
holm during the first week of the strike (Aug. 8-14) 
has been the lowest in the history of the city — 8.7 per 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 139 

thousand. The average for the same week in the past 
ten years has been 13.4 per thousand/' 

"Sweden is the Eldorado of temperance/' writes 
one. "The French and English correspondents who 
come here to find 'copy' during the great strike are in 
desperation over the universal quiet. 'How shall I in- 
terest my dear Parisians?' exclaimed Mons. Sestedt of 
the sensational 'Matin.' Thatthiswasthefruit of prohibi- 
tion a telegram in 'Stockholm's Tidning' clearly indi- 
cates. It was from Helsingor (the Elsinore of Hamlet) a" 
city in Denmark a short ferry-ride from the Swedish 
Helsingborg. ''The city with its open drink-shops has a 
singular appearance. Great numbers of drunken Swedes 
are to be seen, strikers w^ho have come over from Hels- 
ingborg to quench their thirst. The steamer crossing 
gives the same picture. The magistrates of the Sw^ed- 
ish city have requested those of the Danish city to 
shut their drink-shops during the strike.' " 

The statistic of alcohol taxes gives the reason for 
the sudden and extraordinary social improvement in- 
dicated in the above notes. During the month of pro- 
hibition the state's share of the usual Bolag spoil 
shrank something like two and a half million kroner. 
The official report of the strike estimates that the en- 
tire saving to the Swedish people during the prohibi- 
tion weeks amounted to about twelve million kroner. 
For five weeks at least the Swedish proletariat escaped 
the crushing economic burden which the System lays 
on their shoulders.* 



I40 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

"Our experience of prohibition/' says the ''Boras 
Dagblad" has proved once for all : 

**That the cry about substitute drinks in a prohibi- 
tion community (denatured spirits and the like) is a 
false one. 

*'That illicit sale under prohibition is a mere ba- 
gatelle compared with the legal sale. 



* Redogorelse for lockouterna och storstreiken i Sverige 
ar 1909. Arbetsstatistik. A, 9. On page 223 it is remarked 
that "this saving helped the strikers measurably in holding 
out as long as they did.' 

But this is not the only way in which alcohol is revealed 
as a potent weapon with which to exploit the proletariat. In 
a well-known passage in *'Das Judenthum in Gegenwart und 
Zukunft" Eduard von Hartmann remarks that ''the checking 
by legislative means of national drunkenness (in Germany) 
would enable our people in a single generation to compete 
with the temperate Jews. These propositions are fought by 
the Jews not because they are eo ipso anti-Jewish but be- 
cause they would limit the fields of Jewish parasitism." We 
have called attention to the active leadership which Lord 
Rothschild has taken in the fight against restrictive legisla- 
tion in England. The Judeo-capitalist press is constantly 
launching rumors of war and embittering the nations against 
each other. Armaments mean loans; war means the destruc- 
tion of capital, the rising of rates and the tightening of the 
control of the international money market in a few hands. 
But the mass consumption of alcoholica acts as an incessant 
and destructive war. One can imagine the tremendous cheap- 
ening of capital which would result from a few years of pro- 
hibition in the United States not to speak of the world at 
large. It is not hard to understand therefore why there is so 
much solicitude about ''the poor man's beer in certain 
quarters. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 141 

"That the temperance fanatics are right in their 
contention that drink causes practically all offences 
against public order. 

**That citizens almost without exception accept 
loyally the prohibition enactment. 

"That drunkenness disappears so that a reeling 
person becomes a matter of remark." 

And the''Handels-Tidning''of Gothenburg (a paper 
of the standing of the ''New York Tribune'') expresses 
a wish "that the remarkable prohibition experiment 
with its admirable results in lowering crime to an un- 
precedented point, drunkenness practically disappear- 
ing altogether, be continued some w^eeks after the 
strike closes. Its good results have been unmistake- 
able. The violations of law w^hich are generally pre- 
dicted under a prohibitory regime have not occurred 
to any noticeable extent. As was to be foreseen the 
Swedish apothecaries are of too high a standing to en- 
gage, as American druggists do in illegal sale and the 
Swedish police government too strong and too little 
accessible to lawdess influences to be befooled in its ex- 
ecution of the law. It has been now experimentally 
demonstrated that at least local option prohibition 
could be introduced to the great advantage of society.*' 

Other papers express the same opinion. "Ostgot- 
en" of Linkoping says: — ''Now^ that the great blessing 
of prohibition has been proved it were desirable that 
it never be taken from us. We no longer see on the 
streets poor creatures low^ered by drink to beasts. The 
police are saved trouble, the state needs no longer to 



142 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

support drunkards in prisons and these latter have 
their money in their pockets. How happy a thing if 
this could go on forever/' 

And again (Aug. 2j) : — ''As a result of experimen- 
tal trial the shortest and easiest v^ay to the permanent 
adoption of prohibition must be considered as an ex- 
tremely suitable and attractive proposition. All 
doubts as to its desirability are now done away with 
for good and with them the chief hinderance to the 
realization of this great idea." 

The great change of sentiment in regard to pro- 
hibition has been reflected not merely by the press. 
The socialist temperance lodges report unusually large 
accessions as a result of the educating influence of the 
prohibition period. Great demonstrations in favor of 
permanent prohibition have taken place. We note 
among others, those in Ostersund (2,000 people), 
Skara (2,500), Mora (2,000), Linkoping (2,000), Orebro 
(1,000), Gavle (3,000 strikers), Trelleborg (1,500), 
Norrkoping (4,000), Halmstad (1,500), Gothenburg 
(1,500), Solleftea (700), etc., etc. Most extraordinary 
of all is the fact that the state churches have been 
opened to prohibition meetings. The Swedish state 
church has in the past been as little accessible to moral 
movements as state churches elsewhere. Yet meet- 
ings in demand of continued prohibition have been 
held in e. g. Hernosand Cathedral, in Hedvig Kyrka in 
Norrkoping, in Kopparbarg, Hjo, Karlstad (cathe- 
dral), in Askersand and the other parishes of Strang- 
nas, in Holm, Skallerud, Rising, etc., etc. In Lulea 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 143 

prohibition demonstrations have been held in twelve 
parish churches. 

The most significant of all these prohibition meet- 
ings, however, has been that of 25,000 strikers at 
Hornsbargshaga (just out of Stockholm) which de- 
clared unanimously for prohibition. This was no 
piece of momentary enthusiasm. It was preceded by 
two sessions of the entire leadership of the Stockholm 
Trades Unions at which the whole subject was care- 
fully considered from every point of view. 

The manifesto put forth was adopted later at oth- 
er strike meetings all over Sweden. It practically com- 
mits Swedish organized labor to prohibition and is a 
veritable Declaration of Independence. It reads in 
part as follows : 

*'The immediate, magnificent and to many unex- 
pected results of this provisional and incomplete pro- 
hibitory enactment have astonished the world. Drunk- 
enness has ceased and with it the accidents and 
crimes which are a consequence of drunkenness. The 
drink-seller's till which hitherto has been filled with 
the money of poor men is empty. 

*'Shall this attractive picture fade away? Will 
Sw^edish working people allow without protest the 
alcohol capital again to throw its octopus arms around 
ten thousands of Swedish fellow citizens? Will they 
consent that thousands of Swedish men and women 
be sacrificed on the altar of the Alcohol Moloch, — 
that Swedish working people be plundered in the fu- 
ture as in the past of 100 million kroner yearly, that 



144 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

society through this legalized drink trade hold the pro- 
letariat down in ignorance, poverty, and social-polit- 
ical weakness? 

**Or is it not rather right that just in these days 
when the entire working class of Sweden stands in 
battle line that we declare we will no longer tolerate 
a business of which the chief purpose is the ruin of the 
workers. The results of such a declaration may 
not be immediate legislative action, but a united dem- 
onstration on the part of the entire working class will 
certainly reach all ears and be effective in many ways. 

"The Finnish people, Iceland, and nine of the 
United States have already stamped the drink busi- 
ness as a social enemy. It is now the proud duty of 
the Swedish workmen to put themselves at the head 
of this world emancipating movement. In so doing 
they will at this historic moment write one of the nob- 
lest pages in Swedish history and will earn the bless- 
ing of succeeding generations. 

"Comrades, let us drop all unnecessary discussion. 
Let us rally to the great task of our emancipation. The 
way to this emancipation goes through drink prohibi- 
bition, effective and permanent. Forward to this end 
in all parts of Sweden.'' 

Papers and people, trades unions and churches all 
over the land asked for a continuance of the prohibi- 
tion arrangement at least until the depleting effects of 
the economic struggle were in some degree repaired. 

A delegation even besought the king to use his 
influence to this end. 



11 IK GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 145 

All in vain. The friends of the System in the ad- 
ministration, in **the trade,'' in the circles of the rich 
bourgeoisie and aristocracy hurried to open up again 
lest their profit-bringing, tax-paying institution should 
be doomed forever. But re-opening only added furth- 
er proof of the enormous superiority of the Reform 
over the Reformette. It was the end of a good dream, 
Tinker Sly coming back to hard, gray reality — this 
return to ''normal conditions." 

"Svenska Morgenbladet/' the second day after the 
re-opening of the alcohol saison in Stockholm, reports : 
**The cessation of prohibition soon made itself felt. 
The number of arrests has jumped fifteen fold.'' 
Gothenburg's "Handels Tidning'' gave the police report 
for Gothenburg as follows: 

"August, 1908, 647 arrests for drunkenness. 

August, 1909, 113 arrests for drunkenness. 

September 1-7, 1909, 3 arrests. 

September 8-19, 1909, 259 arrests." 

**Ornskioldsviks Allehanda," describing the situa- 
tion in its little town during prohibition said : — 'Tt has 
hardly ever before been so peaceful here. The mili- 
tary sent to keep order has had nothing to do except 
to look after itself. The cause of all this is the new 
prohibition order. Not a person in jail since its adop- 
tion." 

The same paper writing on the day following re- 
opening said : — ''Within two hours after prohibition 
ceased the Company shop had taken in 700 kroner and 
the jail opened for five disorderlies." 



146 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Enkoping reopens its drink-shop. The next day 
three young men are taken to the empty jail. 

Ulricehamn : "All was quiet and still during the 
prohibition weeks. Yesterday the saloons re-opened 
and at night there were nine drunks in jail." 

In Lund the first day of opening 20 drunks! The 
police declared that on this day they had more to 
do than during the five strike weeks. In Gothenburg 
according to ''Goteborgs-Posten/' ''the police have 
rarely seen so much drunkenness. Persons were taken 
to jail so drunk that on the following day only were 
they able to give their names.'' On the single first 
day the System shops opened in Gothenburg there 
were 53 drunks! In prohibition August there were 
but 113, most of which were to be set down to the 
first three days when the System's shops were 
running. In Orebro when the drink-shops were opened 
up the wage-workers of the city petitioned the magis- 
trates not to allow the System's agents to send drink 
on order into homes. The magistracy refused ! In 
this city according to ''Nerikes Tidning" there were in 
1908, 127 persons arrested in the weeks corresponding 
to the strike period of 1909. In the 1909 strike week 
there were but 19 arrests brought before the court. On 
the first day of the System's re-opening eleven drunks 
were lodged in jail and one case of delirium tremens 
reported. 

The usual crop of accidents followed in the wake 
of the System's renewal of activity. ''Goteborgs Post- 
en" recounts them. An intoxicated man tumbles oflF 



1 lli: (;OTHENBURG SYSTEM 147 

Stora-Otterhallen (a high place in Gothenburg) and is 
found dead later. A laborer is discovered dead in a 
flat boat in Barnhusviken (cause alcohol poisoning). 
A serious railway accident near Malmo : — cause, drunk- 
en engineer, etc. * 

But the friends of the System simply will not see 
it. After the strike was declared off a meeting was 
held of the Stockholm city council to consider the need 



* From an interview with a Salvation Slum Sister. 

"The women of the poor were delighted. Men who for- 
merly were wont to be at home neither night nor day and 
when they did come were such a terror to wife and children 
that these were forced to flee to neighbors were absolutely 
changed persons under prohibition. When they went off with 
their families on excursions in the woods about Stockholm in 
strike days the children could hardly realize that these were 
their own fathers." 

When asked if the reopening of the System's man-traps 
had made itself felt in her work, she replied, "Yes," — that 
several cases of fathers' taking and selling children's clothes 
for drink had come to her ears. One woman for whom the 
slum sister had received a warm dress did not dare to wear it 
but had had it locked up in a neighbor's closet. Her husband 
had struck and abused her in order to get it to sell. During 
the strike much clothing had gone through her hands for 
strikers' families. Since the System's shops had reopened 
there were many reports of the pawning of these things by 
drunken fathers. 

One case mentioned was especially interesting. A coun- 
try laborer having saved a little money took a trip to Stock- 
holm during the first week of the strike to "blow it in." But 
when he got to the city he found that the Gothenburg shops 
were all closed. At first he hardly knew what to do. Then the 



148 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

of employing thirty new policemen (at a yearly cost 
of 16,000 kroner) within the city limits. Friherr 
Palmstierna arose and suggested that the cheaper and 
more effective method for preserving order would be, 
as the past wrecks had shown, to keep the Gothenburg 
System shops sealed tight. 'Tnstead of this the city 
govenment had let loose the drink-flood again and the 
old sights of reeling men and w^omen on the way to 
pawnshop, drink-shop, prison and asylum met the 
eye once more." 

And the directors of the drink companies have 
they learned anything from this experiment? Have 
they made any correction or improvement or innova- 
tion in their administration? 

Yes, they have done one thing. The Stockholm 
management has permanently discharged the 150 men 
who went out in the general strike and has filled their 
places wath w^omen. I do not know whether this help 
is cheaper or not. It usually is. It is certain to be 
more docile. 

As to the hygienic and moral effects of the atmos- 
phere of the poison-shops on the w^omen, the directors, 
apparently have little or no concern. 



idea struck him of buying new clothes and a pair of shoes. 
After this he went to the Salvation Army restaurant to get 
dinner. 

He told his story and what a new^ experience it was to 
have new^ shoes on his feet. The like had not happened for 
years. He had fifteen kroner in his pocket, too!" 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 149 

June 1st, 1910. 

"The present state of things/' writes a leading 
Swedish physician, "is degrading and decivilising our 
people. The blood-letting which comes from the great 
emigration takes our best from us. But what is that 
besides the injury which the blood-poisoning of those 
who remain, causes?'' 

He may well say it. Under the Gothenburg Sys- 
tem in 1909 every eighth man in Stockholm between 
the ages of 18 and 60 was arrested for drunkenness. 
''The police generally have a stiff job to keep order," 
wrote a Stockholm policeman at the end of the August 
days. *Tt is impossible to arrest all of the intoxicated 
for we should have no place to lodge them. Those we 
do take must often be dragged station-ward in the 
most repulsive way and in their cells their action is 
that of beasts. But during the prohibition days of 
August, 1909, there were in Stockholm but sixteen 
arrests for drunkenness as against 1,545 in August, 
1908." * 

That single statistic has been a clarion call to the 



♦ There were actually 168 arrests for drunkenness in 
August, 1909 but 152 of them fell on the first three days be- 
fore the drinkshops were closed. The 28 prohibition days 
registered but 16. For all Sweden the arrests for drunken- 
ness in August 1908 were 5,612; for August 1909, 1,244. But 
if the arrests for drunkenness for the first three days of Aug- 
ust throughout Sweden were as relatively numerous as in 
Stockholm, and this is probable, nine-tenths of the arrests 
for August, 1909 would have occurred on these three drinking 
days. 



150 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Swedish people and they have answered to it. The 
"classes/' with indecent haste, started the Bolag on its 
destructive mission again but the nation has protested 
magnificently against its continued existence. Within 
six weeks after re-opening, a plebiscite was started on 
the question of prohibition. Not since the Temporal 
Power was voted away in 1870 has any institution re- 
ceived a more crushing popular condemnation than has 
befallen the Gothenburg System. 

The burden of organizing a non-official vote has 
been no inconsiderable one. Electoral machinery for 
a whole nation had to be improvised. But the half 
million members of Swedish temperance organizations 
have come up admirably to their task. 

The declaration to which the public was jsked 
to set its name was as follows : 

''We, the undersigned Sw^edish men and women, 
realizing the injury to public health and social progress 
which intoxicants cause, declare it to be our opinion 
that the time has fully come to take the first steps in 
the direction of complete and permanent prohibition 
of their sale in our land." 

To this formula was added a short historical sur- 
vey. ''The greater part of the country districts are 
already under prohibition. The national legislature 
has repeatedly commended local option and in 1907 
passed legislation (defeated however by the upper 
house) for national prohibition of the sale of spirits. 
Just recently his Majesty's government has set a com- 
mission to consider measures for re-adjustment of tax- 



THIC GOTlll^XlilRCi SYSTEM 151 

ation in case prohibition become the law of the land. 
The extraordinarily beneficent results of the five weeks 
provisional prohibition of this summer are pointed to 
as an earnest of what a permanent adoption of that 
policy would mean." 

And the result of the referendum? 

Gothenburg's "Handels-Tidning" declares it the 
most powerful expression of public opinion which has 
ever come through private initiative in any land. The 
great *extension-of-suf?rage' petition of 1907 numbered 
350,000 names. But the prohibition petition sums up 
nearly six times as many. The Finnish national pro- 
test of 1899 w^hich was considered an extraordinary 
fighting demonstration does not compare w^ith the 
Swedish prohibition one, even relatively. The econom- 
ic resources for the work were wholly insufficient but 
thousands of volunteers made up for shortage of 
money. 

The Central Statistical Bureau places the w^hole 
number of persons in Sweden above eighteen years at 
3,387,964. Of these one and one quarter million have 
not been reached by the registration. It is not im- 
probable that in this category there may be a some- 
what larger contingent of the indifferent and hostile but 
there is no reason to believe that it would be propor- 
tionately greatly larger. Of the whole number reached 
1,878.519 voted for prohibition. This is 55 per cent of 
the entire grown population. 16,613 voted against — 
one-half of one per cent of the adult population. More 
than one and one-half million persons above eighteen 



152 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

years of age who are outside of all temperance organi- 
zations have declared themselves prohibitionists. In 
sixty-three Swedish cities excluding Stockholm with 
a total population of 400,000 over 18 years, 248,690 vot- 
ed for prohibition and 2458 against. In Stockholm, 
the Gibralter of the drink interest, 43.4 per cent of the 
whole adult population actually registered for prohi- 
bition. There were 95,446 yes — vs. 6,074 no, with 29,- 
861 refusing to vote. Of these last 3,637 declared them- 
selves in favor of prohibition, 6,194 against and 20,034 
indifferent. In Gothenburg the home of the System 
47.6 per cent of the entire adult population voted '^dry/' 
But one should not conclude from this that the friends 
of the System are even here in a majority. Quite the 
contrary. The ratio of signatures obtained (and every 
effort was made to get as complete as possible a regis- 
tration) was fully one hundred to one in favor of pro- 
hibition. 

It is not necessary to pile statistic on statistic. One 
gets an impression of the great strength of prohibition- 
ist opinion from such statements as that in the prov- 
ince of Jonkoping, for example, 106,855 voted for pro- 
hibition and only 836 voted against. In Upsala prov- 
ince 54,021 for and 478 against; Jamtland 52,029 yes, 
171 no; Gotland 17,030 yes, 156 no; Varmland 106,697 
yes, 201 no; Alvsborg 96,264 yes, 815 no; Kopperbarg 
102, 993 yes, 239 no, and so on. 

One of the most astonishing and delightful sur- 
prises in connection w^ith this referendum has been the 
extent to which university influence has favored pro- 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 153 

hibition. This is perhaps as much due to the prepara- 
tory work among Swedish students which has bound 
together eleven thousand university, gymnasial, poly- 
technic and other students into the Svenska Student- 
ers Hel-Xykterhets Forening" — an admirable league of 
anti-alcohol students — as to the prohibition weeks. 
In the chief university town, Upsala, 12,668 voted pro- 
hibition and 236 voted against it. Of the students who 
voted 611 voted for and 114 against. Prof. Frey Svens- 
son the well-known physiologist described alcohol as 
"the king of poisons/' the great first cause of national 
decay and threw his powerful influence to the prohibi- 
tion side. Prof. Santesson denounced those who self- 
ishly refused to give up their vice for the public good. 
Prof. Gustav Cassels, the political economist, declared 
the alcohol capital to be ''worthless, wasted, more than 
that, a positive evil. It is like capital laid down in the 
construction of a hostile fortress in the heart of our 
land spreading ruin on all sides. If the camp had cost 
ever so much it must be razed to the ground." And 
then he went on to say what is so obviously true and 
so unexpected from a political economist's lips : ''There 
is no real wealth except life. There is something 
wrong when people defend a business the only fruits 
of which are tears and cursing. This is a political 
economy of death not of life. To make life cleaner, 
more beautiful, richer — to fill the land with alert, clear- 
headed, bright young people — that's the best political 
economy for Sweden.'' 

The medical professors Henschen, Medin and 



154 THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 

Petren signed the prohibition appeal. That charming 
writer, Selma Lagerlof, expressed her hope for an alco- 
hol-free Sweden. Prof. Wallis wrote : 

''To find the right solution of the alcohol problem 
is the central task of all social efifort. Industrial prob- 
lems, questions arising from falling birth and rising 
death rates, and all the rest, can be settled only when 
the use of alcohol has ceased. The Swedish people 
must head the movement, first of enlightenment as to 
the evil, and finally of its abolition through prohibitory 
legislation. 

"If we fail in obtaining the wills and consciences of 
people through educational effort w^e must look around 
for the political weapon which will break the way for 
us. This we shall find in woman's ballot. The wives 
of work-people in our capital city have seen the bless- 
ings of prohibition in the strike days. With their po- 
litical emancipation the strongest fortress of the Swed- 
ish drink interest will soon be taken." 

What are the prospects of the near future? 

Bright indeed. The second chamber of the 
Riksdag voted last February unanimously to take up 
for consideration the subject of national prohibition. 
The first chamber, like the English House of Lords, a 
spider-clot of reactionarism wnth its landed aristocracy, 
its bishops, its distillers, refused to consent to the 
proposal. 

Fortunately the new sufifrage conditions point to a 
decided change in the character and quality of this 
chamber. 



THE GOTHENBURG SYSTEM 155 

Then look out, ye partisans of international race- 
poisoning! Enforced national prohibition in Sweden 
will give an illustration which will work like a quick 
contagion elsewhere. 




m^i^tmiM 



w^H 



The Breakdown of the 
Gothenburg System 




By ERNEST GORDON 




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